IC-NRLF 


SB 


FRANK.  BENTON 


Cowboy  Life  on 
The  Sidetrack 


Being  an  Extremely  Humorous  and  Sarcastic 

Story   of   the    Trials    and    Tribulations 

Endured  by  a  Party  of    Stockmen 

Making  a  Shipment  from  the 

West  to  the  East. 


BY   FRANK   BEN TON, 
CHEYENNE,  WYO. 


ILLUSTRATED  BY  E.  A.  FILLEAU, 

KANSAS    CITY,    MO. 


DENVER,    COLO.: 
THE    WESTERN    STORIES    SYNDICATE. 


Copyright,  19C3, 
FRAN'/i  ' 


Press  of 

Hudson-Kimberly  Publishing  Company, 
Kansas  City,  Mo. 


DEDICATION. 


For  justice  no  shipper  e'er  asked  in  vain 
From  George  H.  Crosby  or  C.  J.  Lane. 
We  go  to  them,  as  to  our  dad, 
When  on  their  road  our  run  is  bad, 
And  when  we  think  the  freight  too  large 
Ask  them  to  rebate  the  overcharge. 
No  matter  which  road  you  give  your  freight, 
To  both  these  friends,  this  book  I  dedicate. 

F.  B. 


939854 


The  Author  Wailing  for  the  Train  to  Start. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE- 
Chapter  I.— The  Start 11 

Chapter  II. — Chuckwagon's  Dream 21 

Chapter  III.— Grazing  the  Sheep.   29 

Chapter  IV. — Letters  from  Home  Brought  by  Immigrants,     33 

Chapter  V.— Eatumup  Jake's  Life  Story 39 

Chapter  VI. — The  Schoolmarm's  Saddle  Horse 42 

Chapter  VII.— Selling  Cattle  on  the  Range 48 

Chapter  VIII.— True  Snake  Stories 56 

Chapter  IX. — Chuckwagon's  Death 61 

Chapter  X. — Disappearance  of  the  Sheepmen 67 

Chapter  XI. — Our  Arrival  in  Cheyenne 77 

Chapter  XII.— The  Post-Hole  Digger's  Ghost 83 

Chapter  XIII.— Grafting 89 

Chapter  XIV.— The  File 95 

Chapter  XV.— The  Cattle  Stampede 99 

Chapter  XVI. — Catching  a  Maverick 109 

Chapter  XVII.— Stealing  Crazy  Head's  War  Ponies 121 

Chapter  XVIII.— The  Cattle  Queen's  Ghost 136 

Chapter  XIX.— Packsaddle  Jack's  Death 150 

Chapter  XX.— A  Cowboy  Enoch  Arden 164 

Chapter  XXL— Grand  Island 170 

Chapter  XXII.— "Sarer" 176 

Chapter  XXIIL— Arrival  at  South  Omaha  Transfer 195 

Chapter  XXIV.-The  Final  Roundup 207 


PREFACE. 


To  the  readers  of  this  little  booklet:  I  wish  to 
s*a.)  that  while  some  things  in  the  story  seem  over 
drawn,  yet  I  have  endeavored  to  write  it  entirely  from 
a  cowboy  standpoint. 

To  the  sheepmen  of  the  West:  I  want  to  say 
that  J  couldn't  have  written  this  story  true  to  the 
cowboys'  character  without  making  a  great  many  re 
flections  on  sheepmen,  and  I  want  to  tender  my  apol 
ogies  .in  advance  for  anything  they  may  consider  of 
fensive,  as  some  of  my  old-time  and  dearest  friends 
in  the  West  are  among  the  large  sheep  owners.  But 
I  have  been  a  cowboy  and  worked  writh  the  cowboys 
for  thirty-two  years,  and  have  written  the  things  set 
down  here  just  as  they  came  from  the  cowboys'  lips 
on  a  stock  train  as  we  were  waiting  on  sidetracks. 
The  names  of  the  cowboys  used  are  the  actual  nick 
names  of  cowpunchers  whom  I  worked  with  on 
Wyoming  ranges  twenty  years  ago,  and  will  be  rec 
ognized  by  lots  of  old-timers. 

9 


JQ  PREFACE. 

The  statement  has  been  frequently  made  by 
newspapers  that  this  volume  was  written  as  a  roast 
on  the  Union  Pacific  railroad.  I  wish  to  correct  that 
impression  by  saying  that  I  selected  that  road  for  the 
groundwork  of  this  story  to  give  them  a  good  adver 
tisement  free  in  requital  for  the  many  courtesies  ex 
tended  to  me  in  times  past  by  the  officials  of  the  road, 
for  whom  I  have  the  warmest  friendship. 

THE  AUTHOR. 


Cowboy   Life  on   The  Sidetrack. 


CHAPTER  I. 


THE  START. 

I  met  a  man  from  Utah  the  other  day  by  the 
name  of  Joe  Smith,  and  he  gave  me  quite  an  inter 
esting  history  of  his  shipping  some  cattle  to  market 
over  the  great  Overland  route  from  Utah  to  South 
Omaha.  I  shall  tell  it  in  his  own  language.  He  said: 

I  don't  want  to  misstate  anything,  and  I  don't 
want  to  exaggerate  anything,  but  will  tell  you  the  plain 
facts. 

When  I  and  my  neighbors,  old  Chuckwagon, 
Packsaddle  Jack,  Eatumup  Jake  and  Dillbery  Ike  got 
into  the  ranch  with  a  drive  of  cattle  we  found  that 
three  railroad  live  stock  agents,  two  representatives 
of  the  union  stockyards  and  five  commission  house 
drummers  had  been  staying  at  the  ranch  for  a  week 
waiting  to  get  our  shipment.  Each  one  took  each  of 

11 


12  COU'HOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

us  aside  and  gave  us  a  dirty  private  as  to  what  they 
would  do  for  us.  Every  one  of  the  commission  house 
drummers  said  their  house  was  second  last  month  in 
number  of  cars  of  live  stock  in  their  market  and  they 
were  looking  for  them  to  be  first  this  month;  said 
their  salesmen  always  beat  the  other  firms  10  cents 
a  hundred  on  even  splits,  and  their  yardmen  always 
got  the  best  fill  on  the  cattle.  We  went  off  by  our 
selves  to  talk  it  over  and  make  up  our  minds  which 
firm  to  ship  to.  Packsaddle  Jack  -said  it  was  remark- 
able  that  they  all  told  the  same  story,  said  it  was  con 
fusing  as  nary  one  of  them  had  mentioned  a  point 
but  what  all  the  rest  had  coppered  the  same  bet.  Dill- 
bery  Ike  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  they  were  the 
bummest  lot'  of  liars  he  ever  see.  Old  Chuckwagon 
and  Eatumup  Jake  now  compared  notes  and  discov 
ered  that  all  the  drummers  were  out  of  whiskey,  but 
each  drummer  claimed  the  other  dead  beats  had 
drank  his  up.  Old  Chuckwagon  took  a  blue  down 
hearted  fit  of  melancholy  on  seeing  they  was  all  out 
of  whiskey  and  wouldn't  decide  on  any  of  them.  Eat 
umup  Jake  just  chewed  a  piece  of  dried  rawhide  and 
wouldn't  talk.  Packsaddle  Jack  and  me  finally  de 
cided  to  bill  the  cattle  to  ourselves  till  we  got  some 
further  light  on  the  subject. 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  15 

As  the  great  Overland  agent  agreed  that  his  road 
would  run  us  all  the  way  to  market  at  the  rate  of 
forty  miles  an  hour  and  the  other  live  stock  agents 
couldn't  promise  only  thirty-five  miles  an  hour,  we 
gave  the  shipment  to  the  Overland.  The  Overland 
agent  went  right  into  town  to  have  the  cars  greased 
and  sanded  ready  to  start.  We  followed  in  with  the 
cattle.  It  took  us  about  seven  days  to  drive  the  cattle 
in,  and  when  we  got  there  the  cars  were  coming — 
but  hadn't  arrived.  We  waited  around  nine  days, 
grazing  the  steers  on  sage  brush  in  daytime  and  pen 
ning  them  nights  till  they  got  so  thin  we  had  about 
concluded  to  drive  back  and  keep  them  for  another 
year,  when  the  cars  came.  It  seemed  the  railroad  had 
got  them  pretty  near  out  to  us  once,  but  had  run  short 
of  tonnage  cars,  so  just  had  to  haul  them  back  and 
forth  several  times  over  one  division  to  make  up  their 
tonnage  for  the  trains.  This  was  very  annoying  to 
the  railroad  men  as  well  as  ourselves,  but  they  had 
their  orders  to  not  let  any  California  fruit  spoil  on  the 
road  and  to  haul  their  tonnage,  so  just  had  to  use 
these  stock  cars.  It  seems  Harriman  and  Hill  and 
J.  P.  Morgan  and  all  the  other  boys  who  own  the 
western  railroads  are  very  particular  about  every 


IQ  COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

train  hauling  its  full  tonnage,  and  I  heard  there  was 
places  they  had  a  lot  of  scrap  iron  close  to  the  track, 
so  if  the  train  was  short  a  ton  or  so  they  could  load  it 
on,  haul  it  to  some  place  where  there  was  some 
freight  to  take  the  place  of  it,  and  then  unload  it 
for  trains  going  the  other  way  that  were  short  on 
tonnage. 

Finally  we  got  the  cattle  loaded  and  our  contract 
signed.  Got  a  basket  of  grub,  as  we  were  informed 
there  would  be  no  time  to  get  meals  on  the  road.  It 
is  to  this  basket  of  grub  that  we  all  owe  our  lives  to 
day,  so  I  will  give  a  partial  description  of  the  con 
tents.  First,  we  had  four  dozen  bottles  of  beer;  next, 
eight  quarts  of  old  rye  whiskey;  next,  two  corkscrews, 
a  hard  boiled  egg,  a  sandwich  without  any  meat  in  it 
and  a  bottle  of  mustard,  as  Dillbery  Ike  said  he 
always  wanted  mustard.  Eatumup  Jake  was  for  get 
ting  a  can  of  tomatoes,  but  old  Chuckwagon  said  he 
never  had  been  empty  of  canned  tomatoes  in  twenty 
years  and  wanted  one  chance  to  get  them  out  his 
system. 

Well,  we  got  on  the  way-car,  were  hitched  on  to 
the  cattle  train  and  off  at  last  for  the  first  sidetrack, 
which  was  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  the  stockyards. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE   SIDETRACK.  ]  7 

The  conductor  said  we  would  start  right  away  soon 
as  he  got  his  orders,  so  Chuckwagon  proposed  we  open 
the  lunch,  which  meeting  with  direct  approval  from 
the  entire  party,  we  proceeded  to  consume  a  large 
section  of  it,  and  then  went  to  sleep.  When  we  woke 
up  the  sun  was  sinking  in  the  east,  at  least  I  main 
tained  it  was  east,  but  Packsaddle  Jack  said  it  was 
in  the  north.  Anyway  we  argued  till  it  sunk,  and 
never  did  agree.  But  we  found  we  were  on  the  same 
old  sidetrack,  and  as  our  lunch  was  about  gone  we 
made  up  a  jackpot  and  sent  Dillbery  Ike  after  more 
lunch.  Packsaddle  Jack  went  up  and  interviewed  the 
agent  in  the  meantime,  as  he  was  the  only  one  left  in 
the  party  who  was  on  speaking  terms  with  that  func 
tionary,  and  found  out  they  were  holding  us  there  for 
the  arrival  of  eight  cars  of  sheep  that  was  expected 
to  come  by  trail  from  Idaho.  These  sheep  belong  to 
Kambolet  Bill  and  old  Cottswool  Canvasback,  and 
these  two  gentlemen  had  seen  a  cloud  of  dust  ten  miles 
away  about  noon  and  insisted  on  having  the  train 
held,  as  they  were  sure  the  sheep  were  coming,  which 
finally  proved  to  be  correct.  So  when  they  got  the*»i 
loaded,  about  11  o'clock  that  night,  we  quit  quarrel 
ling  with  the  agent,  stopped  making  threats  against 


18  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

the  railroad  superintendent,  got  Dillbery  Ike  to  put 
on  his  coat  (he  had  kept  if  off  all  evening  to  whip  the 
railroad  agent  who  was  to  blame  undoubtedly  for  all 
this  delay),  and  finally  started,   with  rising   spirits. 
But  as  we  got  up  to  the  depot  where  the  conductor 
was  waiting  with  his  final  papers,  the  head  brakeruan 
reported  a  cow  was  down  up  near  the  engine,  and  we 
all  walked  up  there  and  found  that  one  of  Dillbery 
Ike's  critters  had  become  so  weak  and  emaciated  that 
it  had  succumbed  right  in  the  start.    We  prodded  her, 
and  hollered  and  yelled,  and  Chuckwagon  twisted  her 
tail  clear  off  before  we  discovered  she  was  stiff  and 
cold  in  death  and  consequently  couldn't  respond  to 
our  suggestions.    Dillbery  asked  the  advice  of  a  hobo 
(who  was  giving  us  pointers  how  to  get  her  up  before 
we  discovered  her  dead  condition)  about   suing  the 
railroad  company  for  her.    The  hobo  agreed  to  act  as 
witness  and  swear  to  anything  after  Dillbery  gave 
him   a  nip   out   of  his  bottle;   and  after   we   found 
out  what  a  good  fellow  the  hobo  was,  how  much  he 
knew  about  shipping  cattle  and  that  he  wanted  to  go 
east,  we  concluded  to  put  his  name  on  the  contract 
and  make  him  one  of  the  party.    We  asked  his  name 
and  he  said  'twas  most  always  John  Doe,  but  we  nick 
named  him  Jackdo  for  short. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  JQ 

We  all  went  back  to  the  way-car  and  started  up 
to  the  switch  and  back  on  to  a  sidetrack,  as  No.  1  was 
expected  to  arrive  pretty  soon,  as  she  was  four  hours 
late,  and  was  liable  to  come  any  time  after  she  got  four 
hours  late. 

After  taking  some  lunch  we  lay  down  on  the  seats 
and  went  to  sleep,  Jackdo,  Rambolet  Bill  and  Cotts- 
wool1  Canvasback  on  one  side  of  the  car,  and  Dillbery 
Ike,  Chuckwagon,  Packsaddle  Jack,  Eatumup  Jake 
and  myself  on  the  other  side.  It  was  rather  crowded 
on  our  side  of  the  car,  but  none  of  us  liked  the  per 
fume  that  Jackdo  and  the  two  sheepmen  used.  About 
the  time  we  got  to  sleep  the  brakeman  came  in,  woke 
us  all  up  so  he  could  get  into  the  coal  and  kindling 
which  is  under  the  seat  in  a  way-car.  It  was  warm 
weather,  but  the  train  crews  always  build  roaring 
fires  in  hot  weather  on  stock  trains,  and  he  was  only 
following  the  usual  custom.  We  got  our  places  again 
and  dropped  off  to  sleep.  The  conductor  came  in, 
woke  us  all  up  to  punch  our  contracts.  We  went  to 
sleep  again;  the  conductor  came  around,  roused  us  all 
up  to  know  where  we  wanted  our  stock  fed.  Jackdo 
now  gave  us  a  great  deal  of  advice  about  where  to 
feed  and  how  much,  but  Dillbery  said  the  cattle 


2()  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

had  got  used  to  going  without  feed  so  long  that  it 
wasn't  worth  while  to  waste  time  feeding  them  now. 
Jackdo  said  all  the  stockmen  fed  plenty  of  hay  to  their 
stock  al!  the  way  to  Omaha,  but  never  let  them  have 
any  water  till  they  got  there,  as  they  would  get  a  big 
fill  that  way.  We  finally  went  to  sleep  again.  The 
conductor  and  brakeman  took  turns  jumping  down 
out  of  their  high  airy  cab  on  top  of  the  car  (where 
they  keep  a  window  open)  to  build  up  the  fire  and 
see  that  all  the  doors  and  windows  below  were  tightly 
closed  so  the  stockmen  couldn't  get  no  air,  but  hot  air. 
However,  we  had  been  getting  hot  air  from  the  rail 
road  live  stock  agents  and  commission  house  drum 
mers  for  some  time  and  slept  on  till  old  Chuckwagon 
begun  to  snore  and  woke  us  up  again.  It  seemed  he 
was  having  a  fearful  nightmare,  and  we  had  all  we 
could  do  to  keep  him  from  jumping  off  the  train  till 
we  got  him  fairly  awake.  But  after  we  had  each  given 
him  a  drink  from  our  private  bottles  he  gave  several 
long,  shuddering,  shivering  sighs  and  told  us  his 
dream. 


CHAPTER  II. 


CHUCK  WAGON'S  DKEAM. 

He  said  he  dreamed  he  was  in  a  deep  narrow  can 
yon,  and  it  seemed  to  be  a  very  hot  day,  and  he 
thought  he  walked  in  the  broiling  hot  sun  for  miles 
and  oniles,  his  mouth  and  throat  parched  with  thirst 
and  his  eyes  almost  bursting  from  their  sockets  with 
the  heat,  when  all  at  once  he  heard  the  low  mutter- 
ings  of  thunder  and  he  knew  there  was  a  storm  ap 
proaching.  The  thunder  kept  growing  louder  and 
louder,  and  he  looked  around  for  some  shelter  and  dis 
covered  a  narrow  crevice  in  the  rocfks,  and  just  as  the 
storm  broke  he  entered  this  crevice.  He  hadn't  no 
more  than  got  inside  when  he  saw  a  wild  animal  ap 
proaching  the  same  place  of  refuge.  It  was  bigger 
than  any  two  grizzly  bears  he  ever  saw  in  his  life,  but 
was  black  with  white  stripes  down  its  back,  had  a  large 
bushy  tail,  and  he  knew  he  was  up  against  the  biggest 
skunk  the  world  had  ever  known,  and  trembling  with 
horror  he  crept  farther  and  farther  back  into  the 

21 


22  GOWBOJ  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

crevice  till  he  was  stopped  by  a  stream  of  red  molten 
lire  that  seemed  to  be  flowing  across  his  path"  in  the 
mountain.  He  was  about  to  retreat,  but  as  he  turned 
to  retrace  his  steps  the  immense  Jumbo  skunk  was 
coining  in  the  crevice  backwards^  with  its  enormous 
tail  reared  over  its  back,  and  while  the  crevice  seemed 
only  just  large  enough  for  him,  yet  this  great  animal 
had  a  way  of  flattening  himself  out  that,  while  he  was 
a  great  deal  taller  than  before,  yet  did  he  keep  forcing 
himself  gradually  back  towards  poor  Chuck.  Chuck- 
wagon  said  he  knew  that  if  the  skunk  was  disturbed 
he  would  discharge  that  terrible  effluvia  that  is  known 
the  world  over,  yet  the  heat  from  the  molten  stream 
of  lire  was  so  great  that  it  burned  his  face  and  he  was 
obliged  to  keep  it  turned  towards  the  skunk.  Finally 
the  animal  had  backed  so  far  that  the  top  of  Chuck- 
wagon's  head  was  just  under  the  root  of  the  skunk's 
tail.  Then  something  commenced  to  annoy  the  ani 
mal  in  front,  and  it  started  to  back  a  little  farther. 
It  was  then  he  gave  that  despairing,  blood-curdling, 
soul-freezing  yell  that  woke  us  up,  and  he  said  he 
could  still  smell  that  awful  effluvia  even  now  that  he 
was  awake;  but  we  told  him  it  was  just  the  heat  of 
the  car  and  the  perfume  that  Jackdo  and  the  two 
sheepmen  had. 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  23 

We  now  discovered  that  the  train  was  in  motion. 
We  were  in  doubt  a  long  time,  but  after  marking  fence 
posts,  setting  up  a  line  of  sticks  and  testing  it  by  all 
the  known  devices,  we  became  convinced  that  it  was 
really  a  fact,  and  when  there  was  no  longer  any  doubt 
left  in  our  minds  we  fell  on  each  other's  necks  and 
sobbed  for  joy.  We  tapped  four  fresh  bottles  in  suc 
cession  to  celebrate  the  event  and  shook  one  another's 
hands  repeatedly.  But,  alas!  in  the  midst  of  our  re 
joicing  we  came  to  a  sidetrack. 

It  seems  to  be  one  of  the  rules  of  railroading  to 
never  pass  a  sidetrack  with  a  stock  train  till  they 
find  out  whether  that  particular  train  will  fit  that 
sidetrack.  This  sidetrack  was  2,125  feet  and  223  inches 
long  and  our  train  just  fit  it  like  it  had  been  made 
a  purpose.  If  our  train  had  been  three  feet  longer  it 
would  have  been  too  long  for  this  sidetrack,  and  we 
had  a  long  heated  argument  whether  the  train  had 
been  made  for  this  sidetrack  or  the  sidetrack  designed 
for  this  special  train;  but,  anyway,  I  never  saw  a 
better  fit,  and  it  shows  what  mechanical  heads  rail 
road  men  have  got.  We  became  attached  to  this 
sidetrack,  and  for  a  long  time  had  the  sole  use  of  it. 
We  held  it  against  all  comers,  trains  of  empty  cars 


24  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

going  west,  gravel  cars  and  even  handcars,  but  finally 
had  to  leave  it,  and  it  was  with  feelings  of  sadness 
and  regret  that  we  at  last  had  to  bid  it  good-bye.  Al 
though  we  had  many  sidetracks  afterwards,  yet  as 
this  one  was  the  first  we  had  entirely  to  ourselves  we 
hated  to  give  it  up  and  our  eyelashes  were  wet  with 
unshed  tears  as  we  blew  the  last  kisses  from  our  fin 
ger  tips  when  it  slowly  faded  from  our  sight  around 
a  narrow  bend  in  the  roadbed.  How  long  it  remained 
true  to  us  we  never  knew,  probably  not  long,  as  it 
was  a  lonely  spot  and  undoubtedly  was  occupied  by 
another  stock  train  as  soon  as  wre  were  out  of  sight. 
While  at  this  sidetrack  we  took  a  stroll  over  the 
hills  one  day  and  found  a  sage  hen's  nest  with  the  old 
hen  setting.  Dillbery  Ike  slipped  up,  grasped  her  by 
the  tail  and  in  her  struggle  to  free  herself  she  lost  all 
her  tail  feathers  and  got  away.  Dillbery  tied  a  string 
arouud  the  iail  feathers  and  took  them  along.  This, 
as  it  turned  out  afterwards,  was  very  fortunate,  as  we 
were  able  by  the  feathers  to  settle  a  dispute  that  might 
have  led  to  serious  consequences,  which  happened  in 
this  way:  Some  time  after  the  sage  hen  episode,  while 
we  were  waiting  on  a  sidetrack  one  day  for  a  gravel 
train  going  west,  and  having  had  nothing  to  eat  for  a 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  25 

long  time  but  mustard  on  ice,  we  had  become  very 
much  discouraged  and  had  even  tried  to  buy  Cotts- 
wool  Canvasback's  coat  to  make  soup  of,  when  Jack- 
do  discovered  a  flock  of  half-grown  young  sage  chick 
ens  feeding  along  past  the  train,  and  immediately  we 
were  all  out,  filled  our  hats  with  rocks  and  com 
menced  to  knock  them  over.  We  managed  to  kill  the 
most  of  them  along  with  the  old  mother  bird,  and 
made  the  startling  discovery  that  she  had  lost  her  tail 
feathers.  We  showed  her  to  the  division  superin 
tendent,  who  came  along  in  his  private  car  just  then 
and  stopped  to  explain  gome  of  the  delays  on  our  run, 
and  told  him  the  story  of  Dillbery  pulling  out  her 
tail  when  she  was  setting.  The  superintendent  argued 
it  couldn't  be  the  same  hen,  but  when  Dillbery  got  the 
bunch  of  tail  feathers  they  just  fitted  in  the  holes  in 
the  poor  old  bird's  rump  and  that  settled  the  dispute. 
There  was  another  little  incident  occurred  after 
wards  that  shows  the  world  isn't  so  large  after  all. 
One  day  while  we  were  waiting  on  a  sidetrack  a  mud 
turtle  came  strolling  by,  and  as  Jackdo  had  suggest 
ed  turtle  soup  for  old  Chuckwagon,  who,  by  the  way, 
had  been  feeling  bad  ever  since  the  night  he  had  the 
gkunk  dream;  not  being  able  to  keep  anything  on  his 


.)g  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

stomach,  we  captured  the  turtle  and  on  examining  a 
peculiar  mark  on  the  back  of  its  shell  discovered  it 
was  Dillbery  Ike's  brand  that  he  had  playfully  burnt 
into  the  animal  the  day  before  we  left  the  ranch  with 
the  cattle. 


Rambolet  Bill,  Cottswool  Canvasback  and  Jackdo  Watching  the 
Sheep  Graze. 


CHAPTER  III. 


GRAZING  THE  SHEEP. 

It 's  not  generally  known  that  when  sheep  get  ex 
tremely  hungry  they  eat  the  wool  off  one  another, 
but  nevertheless  this  is  a  fact,  and  Cottswool  Canvas- 
back  and  Rambolet  Bill's  sheep  had  long  ere  this  de 
voured  all  the  wool  off  each  other's  backs,  but  we  had 
had  a  couple  good  warm  showers  of  rain  and  the  wool 
had  started  up  again  and  was  high  enough  for  pretty 
fair  grazing,  so  the  two  sheepmen  were  middlin'  easy, 
as  they  had  a  receipt  for  cooking  jackrabbits  so  they 
wouldn't  shrink  in  the  cooking.  They  claimed  that 
Manager  Gleason  of  the  Warren  Live  Stock  Company 
had  invented  this  receipt.  However,  lambing  season 
had  come  on  and  Cottswool  and  Rambolet  were  kept 
pretty  busy  as  double  deck  cars  was  very  cramped 
quarters  to  lamb  in.  Rambolet  wanted  to  unload  the 
sheep,  and  wrhen  they  got  through  lambing  to  drive 
them  to  Laramie  City  and  catch  the  train  again,  but 
Cottswool  Canvasback  said  they  would  have  to  pay 
the  same  tariff  for  the  cars  and  insisted  on  the  rail 
road  company  earning  their  money. 

29 


;.JO  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

JACKDO  SINGS  "HOME,  SWEET  HOME." 

I  remember  a  pathetic  little  incident  that  occur 
red  about  this  time.     When  we  were  waiting  on  a 
sidetrack  one  evening  I  suggested  to  Jackdo  that  he 
sing  us  a  song  to  while  away  the  time,  and  he  started 
in  singing  "Home,  Sweet  Some,-'  in  a  choked-by-cin- 
ders  sort  of  voice,  and  he  hadn't  been  singing  long 
before    T    discovered    old    Chuckwagon    and    Dillbery 
Ike  lying  face  downward  on  the  seats  sobbing  like 
their  hearts  would  break.    Chuck  and  Dillbery  didn't 
have  much  of  a  home,  as  they  batched  in  little  dobe 
shacks  away  out  on  the  edge  of  the  plains;  but  that 
old  song,  even  if  sung  by  a  hoot  owl,  would  make  a 
stockman  weep  when  he  is  on  a  stock  train  and  has 
got  about   half-way  to   market.     However,   it  didn't 
seem  to  affect  Eatumup  Jake  much,  and  yet  Jake  had 
married  a  big,  buxom,  red-headed  Mormon  girl  about 
six  weeks   before  we   started  to  ship.     While  Jake 
looked  like  he  was  in  delicate  health  when  we  left 
home,  yet  he  had  grown  strong  and  hearty  on  the  trip 
in  spite  of  the  privations  and  sufferings  we  had  to 
go  through,  and  was  pretty  near  always  whistling  in 
a  lively  way  "The  Girl  I  Left  Behind  Me." 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK.  3^ 

We  now  arrived  at  a  town.  It  was  about  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning  and  the  conductor  roused  us 
up  to  tell  us  we  would  have  to  change  way-cars,  as 
they  didn't  go  any  farther.  We  asked  him  which 
way  to  go  when  we  got  off,  and  he  said  go  anyway  we 
wanted  to.  We  asked  him  where  our  car  was  that 
we  would  go  out  on,  and  he  said,  "Damfino."  So  we 
started  out  to  limit  it.  This  was  a  division  station, 
there  were  hundreds  of  cars  in  every  direction  and 
they  had  put  us  o^T  a  mile  from  the  depot.  W^e  beg 
ged  piteously  from  everyone  we  met  to  tell  us  where 
the  way-car  was  that  went  out  on  the  stock  train.  We 
carried  our  luggage  back  and  forth,  fell  over  switch 
frogs  in  the  darkness  and  skinned  our  shins,  fell  over 
one  another  trying  to  keep  out  the  way  of  switch 
engines,  ran  ourselves  out  of  breath  after  brakemen, 
conductors,  engineers  and  car  oilers,  but  everyone  of 
them  gave  us  the  same  stereotyped  answer,  "Darn- 
fino."  At  last  we  started  out  to  hunt  up  the  stock 
again,  but  just  as  we  found  it  they  started  to  switch 
ing.  However,  we  climbed  on  the  sides  of  the  cars 
and  hung  on,  all  but  poor  old  Chuck  wagon,  who  had 
been  sorter  under  the  weather  and  wasn't  quite 
quick  enough.  But  he  chased  manfully  after  us  till 

3- 


32  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

we  came  to  a  switch,  when  we  dashed  past  him  going 
the  other  way.  We  hollered  to  him  to  follow  the 
train,  which  lie  did,  but  only  to  find  us  going  the  oth 
er  way  again.  And  thus  we  kept  on.  How  long  this 
would  have -lasted  I  don't  know,  for  old  Chuck  was 
game  to  the  death  and  had  throwed  away  his  coat, 
vest,  hat  and  boots  and  was  bound  to  catch  them 
stock  oars,  and  the  switchman  and  engineer  was 
bound  he  shouldn't.  But  finally  the  engine  had  to 
stop  for  coal  and  water,  and  they  shoved  us  in  on  a 
sidetrack,  went  off  to  bed  and  left  us  there  till  10 
o'clock  the  next  day.  But  I  never  shall  forget  the  an 
guish  and  horror  we  endured  for  fear  we  wouldn't  find 
that  way-car  and  they  would  pull  the  stock  out  and 
leave  us  there.  Packsaddle  Jack  gave  its  as  his  opin 
ion  that  the  railroad  people  had  plotted  to  do  that, 
but  we  frustrated  their  designs  by  getting  on  the  stock 
icars  and  staying  with  them.  We  all  believed  Pack- 
saddle  Jack  was  right,  but  since  that  time  I've  talked 
with  a  good  many  cattlemen  and  found  out  that's 
the  way  they  treat  everybody. 


CHAPTER   IV. 


LETTERS  FROM  HOME  BROUGHT  BY  IMMIGRANTS. 

We  arrived  at  Hawlins,  Wyoming,  one  bright 
sunny  morning  and  planned  to  get  a  square  meal  there 
and  kinder  clean  up  and  take  a  shave.  But  this  was 
a  sheep  town  and  full  of  sheepmen  and  the  odor  of 
sheep  was  so  strong  we  just  stopped  long  enough  to 
fill  our  bottles  and  then  sauntered  on  ahead  of  our 
train,  expecting  to  get  on  when  it  overtook  us.  Well, 
we  sauntered  and  sauntered,  looking  back  from  every 
hill,  but  no  train,  and  finally  when  we  were  tired  from 
walking  in  the  heat  and  dust  we  found  a  shade  tree, 
and,  laying  down,  went  to  sleep.  How  long  we  slept 
I  don't  know,  but  when  we  awoke  it  was  night.  In 
the  darkness  we  had  hard  work  finding  our  way  back 
to  the  railroad  track,  and  for  a  while  were  undecided 
which  way  to  go,  but  finally  took  the  wrong  direc 
tion,  and  after  plodding  along  in  the  dark  for  several 
miles  we  came  on  top  a  high  hill  and  saw  the  lights  of 
the  town  below  us  that  we  left  that  morning.  We  now 


34  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  PHE  SIDETRACK. 

held  a  council  as  to  who  should  go  down  to  town  to 
get  our  bottles  filled.  Jackdo  offered  to  go,  but  we  had 
already  discovered  we  couldn't  trust  him  on  that  kind 
of  errand,  as  the  bottles  would  be  just  as  empty  when 
he  got  back  as  when  he  started,  so  finally  we  sent 
Eatumup  Jake  and  told  him  to  inquire  if  our  train  was 
'Still  there  or  had  gone  sneaking  by  us  when  we  were 
asleep.  Jake  returned  about  midnight  with  the  re 
freshments  and  the  information  that  the  train  was  on 
ahead.  So  we  started  after  it,  exchanging  ideas  along 
the  route  as  to  how  far  we  would  have  to  walk  before 
we  came  to  a  sidetrack,  as  we  didn't  doubt  for  a  mo 
ment  we  would  find  the  stock  on  the  first  siding 
it  could  get  in  on.  This  wras  one  of  the  pleasantest 
nights  we  had  on  our  whole  trip,  with  good  fresh  air 
(we  made  the  sheepmen  and  Jackdo  walk  about  three 
miles  ahead  of  us  and  the  wind  was  blowing  in  their 
direction)  and  nothing  to  worry  us.  We  talked  of 
home  and  speculated  as  to  how  many  calves  the  boys 
at  home  had  branded  for  us  on  their  annual  roundups 
since  we  left. 

Finally  Chuckwagon  stopped  and  sniffed  a  time 
or  two  and  said  he  was  satisfied  the  sheepmen  and 
Jackdo  must  have  found  the  train.  After  we  walked 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  35 

a  mile  further  we  came  to  the  sheepmen  and  Jackdo 
setting  down  at  a  sidetrack,  but  the  stock  train  was 
not  there.  We  were  much  puzzled  at  this,  but  after  a 
great  deal  of  argument  Eatumup  Jake,  who  had  stud 
ied  Arithmetic  some,  proposed  to  measure  the  side 
track.  He  suggested  as  the  only  possible  solution  to 
the  train  not  being  there  that  probably  the  track  was 
too  short  for  the  train.  The  trouble  now  was  to  get 
some  proper  thing  to  measure  with.  Finally  we  took 
Eatumup  Jake's  pants  which  he  had  removed  for  the 
purpose,  they  being  thirty-four  inches  inseam.  By  tak 
ing  the  end  of  each  leg  they  measured  sixty-eight  in 
ches,  or  five  feet  eight  inches,  to  a  measurement. 
Every  time  we  made  a  measurement  Dillbery  put  a 
pebble  in  his  pocket  for  feet  and  Chuckwagon  put  one 
in  his  for  inches.  When  we  got  through  we  made  a 
light  out  of  some  sticks  and  counted  the  pebbles.  Dill 
bery  had  292  and  Chuckwagon  287.  They  both  insisted 
they  had  made  no  mistake,  so  we  had  to  measure  it  all 
over  again.  There  had  come  up  a  little  flurry  of  snow 
in  the  meantime,  which  happens  frequently  at  that  alti 
tude,  and  Eatumup  ^Jake  wanted  them  to  divide  the 
difference  between  287  and  202,  but  as  one  had  inches 
and  the  other  feet,  Eatumup  Jake  couldn't  make  the 


30  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

proper  division  in  his  head  arid  we  had  nothing  to  fig 
ure  with.  So  we  measured  again  and  counted  and 
found  they  each  had  287.  As  this  would  only  equal 
forty-one  stock  oars,  and  as  there  was  forty-three  cars 
of  stock,  five  cars  of  California  fruit,  three  cars  mer 
chandise,  nine  tonnage  cars  and  the  way-car,  we  knew 
our  train  couldn't  possibly  get  in  on  this  sidetrack.  So 
Jake  put  on  his  pants  and  we  started  on  again,  per 
fectly  satisfied  now  that  we  had  solved  what  seemed 
at  first  a  great  mystery. 

After  walking  several  miles  it  became  daylight 
and  we  discovered  a  man  and  woman  with  a  mule  team 
and  wagon,  going  the  same  way  we  were.  As  they 
didn't  seem  to  have  much  of  a  load  and  asked  us  to 
ride  we  concluded  to  ride.  However,  as  we  couldn't 
all  ride  in  the  wagon  at  once  and  as  the  wagon  road 
wasn't  always  in  sight  of  the  track,  we  had  Jackdo 
and  the  two  sheepmen  walk  along  the  track,  and  if 
they  found  the  train  they  were  to  holler  and  wave 
something  to  us  so  we  would  know. 

Eatumup  Jake  had  been  kinder  grumpy  ever  since 
he  had  to  stand  the  snowstorm  without  any  pants  on 
while  we  done  the  measuring,  but  now  he  was  to  hear 
some  good  news  which  brought  such  overwhelming 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  37 

joy  to  him  as,  indeed,  it  did  to  all  of  us,  as  our  joys  and 
sorrows  were  one  on  this  trip.  It  will  be  remembered 
that  Eatumup  Jake  had  married  a  buxom  Mormon 
girl  about  six  weeks  before  we  started  with  the  cattle, 
and  now  it  turned  out  that  these  people,  who  were 
on  their  way  from  the  Two  Wallys  to  Arkansas,  had 
come  by  Jake's  place  in  Utah  and  Jake's  wife  had  not 
only  sent  a  letter  by  this  couple  to  him,  but  the  letter 
contained  the  news  that  he  was  the  father  of  twin  boys. 
Jake's  pride  and  joy  knew  no  bounds,  and  for  a  time 
he  talked  about  going  back  and  taking  a  look  at  the 
twins  and  then  catching  up  to  us  again.  But  we 
argued  this  would  bring  bad  luck,  and  anyway  there 
were  immigrants  on  the  way  from  Oregon  to  Arkansas 
all  the  time,  and  Jake's  wife  said  all  our  folks  in  Utah 
had  agreed  to  send  us  letters  every  time  anyone  came 
by  with  a  team  going  east. 

We  now  came  in  sight  of  our  stock  train  as  it  was 
slowly  climbing  a  grade,  but  we  were  loath  to  give  up 
our  new-found  friends,  the  immigrants,  and  ;t  wasn't 
till  they  had  drove  several  miles  ahead  of  the  stock 
train  that  we  finally  bid  them  a  reluctant  good-bye 
and  sauntered  on  back  to  meet  the  special.  This  is 
the  first  time  I've  used  the  word  special,  but  all  stock 


38  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

trains  are  known  as  specials  because  they  make  special 
time  with  them. 

After  we  got  on  the  train  and  had  taken  the  prod 
pole,  and  drove  the  sheepmen  and  Jackdo  out  and 
made  them  ride  on  top,  we  emptied  a  bottle  or  so  and 
Eatumup  Jake  got  very  hilarious  and  sang  "The 
Little  Black  Bull  Came  Running  Down  the  Mountain," 
while  we  all  joined  in  the  chorus.  And  finally  when 
old  Chuckwagon,  Packsaddle  Jack  and  Dillbery  Ike 
had  gone  to  sleep  on  the  floor  of  the  car,  Eatumup 
Jake  got  me  by  the  button  hole  and  told  me  the  story 
of  his  life  in  the  following  words.  He  talked  in  a 
thick,  slushy,  slobbery  voice,  somethingg  like  the  mud 
and  water  squirts  through  the  holes  in  your  overshoes 
on  a  sloppy  day,  but  this  was  on  account  of  a  great 
deal  of  whiskey  and  the  fact  that  he  had  taken  a  slight 
cold  the  night  before  standing  in  the  snowstorm  while 
we  used  his  pants  to  measure  the  sidetrack. 


CHAPTER  V. 


EATUMUP  JAKE'S  LIFE  STORY. 

He  said  his  father  was  a  poor  Methodist  preacher 
in  a  little  country  place  in  western  Kansas  where  he 
was  born.  Said  they  lived  there  many  years  because 
they  was  so  durn  poor  they  couldn't  get  away.  His 
father's  salary  was  paid  promptly  every  month  in  con 
tributions  and  consisted  of  one  sack  of  cornmeal,  one 
sack  of  pofatoes,  two  gallons  sorghum  molasses,  four 
old  crowing  hens,  seven  jack  rabbits,  one  quart  choke 
cherry  jelly  and  one  load  of  dried  buffalo  chips  for  fuel. 
He  said  his  father  was  one  of  the  most  patient  beg 
gars  he  ever  saw,  that  he  took  up  collections  at  all 
times  and  on  all  occasions,  morning,  noon  and  night 
— week  days  and  Sundays  he  passed  the  hat.  He  had 
seventeen  different  kinds  of  foreign  missions  to  beg 
for.  He  had  twenty-one  different  kinds  of  home  mis 
sions  to  beg  for,  and  while  it  was  the  poorest  com 
munity  he  ever  saw,  most  people  too  poor  to  have  any 
tea  or  coffee,  or  overshoes  for  winter  or  shoes  in  sum 
mer,  yet  his  father  begged  so  persistently  that  he  got 

39 


40 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 


worlds  of  flannels  for  the  heathens  in  Africa,  any 
amount  of  bibles  for  the  starving  children  in  New 
York  City  and  all  kinds  of  religious  literature  for  the 
reconcentrados  in  India. 

Finally  his  mother  died  of  nothing  on  the  stom 
ach,  his  father  and  a  woman  missionary  went  to  Chi 
cago,  his  nine  brothers  and  sisters  was  bound  out  and 
adopted  by  different  people,  and  he,  the  oldest  child, 
was  taken  in  charge  by  a  professional  bone  picker,  and 
although  he  was  only  10  years  old  at  the  time,  yet  he 
picked  up  bones  on  Kansas  prairies  summer  and  winter 
for  two  yea  rs^  fill  a  bunch  of  cowpunchers  came  along 
and  took  him  away  from  the  bone  picker.  He  said  he 
never  liad  anything  much  to  eat  till  he  got  into  this 
cow  camp,  and  just  eat  roast  veal,  baking  powder  bis 
cuits,  plum  duff  and  California  canned  goods  till  all 
the  cowboys  stopped^eating  to  look  at  him,  and  one 
of  them  asked  his  name,  and  when  he  said  Jacob,  they 
immediately  nicknamed  him  Eatumup  Jake. 

He  said  he  never  had  seen  any  of  his  folks  since 
all  this  "happened,  but  one  night  he  had  a  'dreani,  just 
as  plain  as  day.  He  thought  he  was  in  a  big  city  arid 
a  one  legged  man  with  blue  glasses  was  following  him, 
and  when  he  stopped  the  man  said:  " Jacob,  I'm  your 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  41 

father,"  and  he  asked  him  how  he  lost  his  leg,  what 
he  was  wearing  Blue  glasses  for  (a  placard  saying  he 
was  blind),  and  why  he  held  out  a  tincup,  and  his 
father  said:  "I  aant  lost  any  leg,  it 's  tied  up  inside  my 
pants  leg,  and  I'm  wearing  glasses  so  people  can't  see 
my  eyes."  And  he  said  his  father  told  him  that  his 
training  as  a  Methodist  preacher  had  peculiarly  fitted 
hirii  for  a  professional  beggar. 

When  Eatumup  Jake  finished  telling  his  story  he 
fell  to  weeping  and  wept  very  bitterly  for  a  long  time, 
and  when  1  tried  to  comfort  him  by  telling  him  a  man 
wasn't  to  blame  for  what  his  folks  done,  he  said  no, 
but  cowmen  were  to  blame  when  they  fell  so  durn  low 
as  to  spend  the  best  part  of  their  lives  on  a  special 
stock  train  associating  with  a  hobo  and  two  sheepmen. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


THE  SCHOOLM ARM'S  SADDLE  HORSE. 

One  day  while  waiting  on  a  sidetrack  old  Chuck- 
wagon  got  to  telling  about  the  new  schoolmarm  in 
their  neighborhood.  He  said  he  reckoned  she  was  as 
high  educated  as  anybody  ever  got.  He  said  she  didn't 
sabe  cowpuncher  talk  much,  but  she  used  some 
mighty  high-sounding  words.  Why,  he  said,  she 
called  a  watergap  a  wateryawn;  a  shindig,  a  dawnce; 
Injuns,  Naborigines;  cowboys,  cow  servants,  and  Bill 
Allen's  hired  girl,  where  she  boards,  a  domestic.  The 
first  night  she  came  to  Bill  Allen's  she  heard  them  a 
talking  about  cowpunchers,  and  she  asked  old  Bill  if 
he  wouldn't  show  her  a  real  live  cowpuncher;  said 
there  weren't  any  cowpunchers  in  Boston,  where  she 
came  from,  and  old  Bill  said  he'd  have  one  over  from 
the  nearest  cow  ranch  next  day. 

So  next  morning  he  comes  over  to  my  ranch  and 
tells  me  to  rig  out  in  fur  snaps,  put  on  my  buckskin 
shirt  amTLig  Mexican  hat  with  tassels  on  it,  with  red 
silk  handkerchief  around  my  neck,  and  he  would  take 

42 


George  H.  Crosby,  General  height*' Agent  $.••$  M.\  ,'"', 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  45 

me  over  and  introduce  me  to  the  new  schoolmarm. 
So  I  rigged  all  up  proper,  and  when  we  got  over  to 
Bill  Allen's  place,  old  Bill  told  his  wife  to  go  to  the 
schoolmarm's  room  and  tell  her  he  had  a  genuine  cow- 
puncher  out  there  and  for  her  to  come  out  and  see 
him.  She  told  Mrs.  Allen  she  was  busy  just  then,  but 
tefl  Mr.  Allen  to  take  the  cowpuncher  to  the  barn  and 
give  him  some  hay  and  she  would  be  out  directly. 

Now,  he'd  been  wondering  ever  since,  old  Chuck 
said,  what  on  earth  she  reckoned  a  cowpuncher  was. 
Still  she  was  mighty  green  about  some  things,  'cause 
when  they  had  a  little  party  at  old  Bill  Allen's  all  the 
girls  got  to  telling  about  the  breed  of  their  saddle 
hosses,  and  some  said  their  hoss  was  a  Hamil toman, 
and  some  said  their  hoss  was  thoroughbred,  and  some 
was  Blackhawk  Morgan.  The  schoolmarm  said  she 
had  a  gentleman  friend  in  Boston  who  had  a  very 
fine  saddle  hoss  of  the  stallion  breed,  and  when  the 
boys  giggled  and  the  gals  began  to  look  red,  she  says 
as  innocent  as  a  lamb.  "There  is  such  a  breed  of 
hosses,  ain't  they?"  "Of  course,"  she  says,  "I  know 
it's  a  rare  breed  and  perhaps  you  folks  out  here  never 
saw  any  of  that  breed."  She  says,  "They  are  great 
hosses  to  whinney.  Why,  my  friend's  hoss  kept 


40  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

whinneying  all  the  time."  When  she  got  to  describ 
ing  that  boss's  habits,  course  all  us  boys  begun  to 
back  up  and  git  out  the  room.  I  reckon  she  was 
from  an  Irish  family,  'cause  she  insisted  Mrs.  Flana 
gan  was  right  when  she  called  the  station  a  daypo. 
But  I  reckon  she  could  just  knock  the  hind 
sights  off  anybody  when  it  came  to  singing.  I  never 
did  know  just  whether  it  was  a  song  or  not  she  sung, 
'cause  none  of  us  could  understand  it.  She  said  it 
was  Italian,  and  of  course  there  wasn't  any  of  us  un 
derstood  any  Dago  talk.  But  she  would  just  com 
mence  away  down  in  a  kind  of  low  growl,  like  a 
sleeping  foxhound  when  he  is  dreaming  of  a  bear 
fight,  and  keep  growling  a  little  louder  and  little 
louder,  and  directly  begin  to  give  some  sliort  barks, 
and  then  it  would  sound  like  a  herd  of  wild  cattle 
bawling  round  a  dead  carcass;  then  like  a  lot  of  hun 
gry  coyotes  howling  of  a  clear  frosty  night,  and 
finally  wind  up  like  hundreds  of  wild  geese  flying  high 
and  going  south  for  winter.  She  said  her  voice  had 
been  cultivated  and  I  reckon  it  had.  You  could  tell 
it  had  been  laid  off  in  mighty  even  rows,  the  weeds 
all  pulled  out  and  the  dirt  throwed  up  close  to  the 
hills.  But  somehow  I  'd  a  heap  rather  hear  a  little 


COWB07  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK.  47 

blue-eyed  girl  I  know  up  iu  the  mountains  in  Idaho 
sing  "The  Suwanee  River,"  and  "Coming  Through  the 
Eve,"  'cause  I  can  understand  that.  But  I  guess 
them  Boston  girls  are  all  right  at  home.  I  reckon 
they  are  used  to  them  there. 


CHAPTER   VII. 


SELLING  CATTLE  ON  THE  RANGE. 

Then  old  Facksaddle  Jack  got  to  telling  about 
Senator  Dorsey,  of  Star  Route  fame,  selling  a  littk 
herd  of  cattle  he  had  in  northern  New  Mexico.  He 
said  the  Senator  had  got  "hold  of  some  eye-glass 
Englishmen,  and  representing  to  them  that  he  had  a 
large  herd  of  cattle  in  northern  New  Mexico,  finally 
made  a  sale  at  |25  a  head  all  round  for  the  cattle. 
The  Englishmen,  however,  insisted  on  counting  the 
herd  and  wouldn't  take  the  Senator's  books  for  them. 
Dorsey  finally  agreed  to  this,  but  said-  the  cattle 
would  have  to  be  gathered  first.  The  Senator  then 
went  to  his  foreman,  Jack  Hill,  and  asked  Jack  if  he 
knew  of  a  place  where  they  could  drive  the  cattle 
around  a  hill  where  they  wouldn't  have  to  travel  too 
far  getting  around  and  have  a  good  place  to  c^ount 
them  on  one  side.  Jack  selected  a  little  round  moun 
tain  with  a  canyon  on  one  side  of  it,  where  he  sta 
tioned  the  Englishmen  and  their  bookkeepers  and 

48 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  49 

Senator  Dorsey.  The  Senator  had  about  1,000  cattle, 
and  Jack  and  the  cowboys  separated  them  into  two 
bunches  out  in  the  hills,  a  couple  of  miles  from  the 
party  of  Englishmen  and  out  of  sight.  Keeping  the 
two  herds  about  a  mile  apart,  they  now  drove  the 
first  herd  into  the  canyon,  which  ran  around  the  edge 
of  the  bluff,  and  on  the  bank  of  the  canyon  sat  the 
Senator  with  the  Englishmen,  and  they  counted  the 
cattle  as  the  herd  strung  along  by  them.  The  herd 
was  hardly  out  of  sight  before  the  second  bunch  came 
stringing  along.  Two  or  three  cowboys,  though,  had 
met  the  first  herd,  and,  getting  behind  them,  gal 
loped  them  around  back  of  the  mountain  and  had 
them  corning  down  the  canyon  past  the  Englishmen 
again,  and  they  were  counted  the  second  time.  And 
they  were  hardly  out  of  sight  before  the  second  di 
vision  was  around  the  mountain  >and  coming  along  to 
be  tallied  some  more.  And  thus  the  good  work  went 
on  all  day  long,  the  Senator  and  the  Englishmen  only 
having  a  few  minutes  to  snatch  a  bite  to  eat  and  tap 
fresh  bottles. 

The  foreman  told  the  English  party  at  noon  that 
they  was  holding  an  enormous  herd  back  in  the  hills 
yet  from  wrhich  they  were  cutting  off  these  small 


50  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

bunches  of  500  and  bringing  them  along  to  be  tallied. 
But  along  about  3  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  the  cattle 
began  to  get  thirsty  and  footsore.  Every  critter  had 
traveled  thirty  miles  that  day,  and  lots  of  them  began 
to  drop  out  and  lay  down.  In  one  of  the  herds  was  an 
old  yellow  steer.  He  was  bobtailed,  lophorned  and 
had  a  game  log,  and  for  the  fifteenth  time  he  limped 
by  the  crowd  that  was  counting.  Milord  screwed  his 
eyeglass  a  little  tighter  into  his  eye,  and  says,  "There 
is  more  bloody,  blarsted,  lopho;rned,  bobtailed,  yellow, 
crippled  brutes  than  anything  else,  don't  you  know." 
Milord's  dogrobber  speaks  up,  and  says,  "But,  me 
lord,  there  's  no  hanimal  like  'im  hin  the  hither  'erd." 
The  Senator  overheard  this  interesting  conversa 
tion,  and  taking  the  foreman  aside,  told  him  when 
they  got  that  herd  on  rhe  other  side  of  the  mountain 
again  to  cut  out  that  old  yellow  reprobate,  and  not 
let  him  come  by  again.  So  Jack  cut  him  out  and  run 
him  off  aways  in  the  mountains.  But  old  yellow  had 
got  trained  to  going  around  that  mountain,  and  the 
herd  wasn't  any  more  than  tallied  again  till  here  come 
old  Buck,  as  the  cowboys  called  him,  limping  along 
behind  down  the  canyon,  the  Englishmen  staring  at 
him  with  open  mouths,  and  Senator  Dorsey  looking 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK.  51 

at  old  Jack  Hill  in  a  reproachful,  grieved  kind  of  way. 
The  cowboys  ran  old  Buck  off  still  farther  next  time, 
but  half  an  hour  afterwards  he  appeared  over  a  little 
rise  and  slowly  limped  by  again. 

The  Senator  now  announced  that  there  was  only 
one  herd  more  to  count  and  signaled  to  Jack  to  ride 
around  and  stop  the  cowboys  from  bringing  the 
bunches  around  any  more,  which  they  done.  But  as 
the  party  broke  up  and  started  for  the  ranch,  old 
Buck  came  by  again,  looking  like  he  was  in  a  trance, 
and  painfully  limped  down  the  canyon.  That  night 
the  cowboys  said  the  Senator  was  groaning  in  his 
sleep  in  a  frightful  way,  and  when  one  of  them  woke 
him  up  and  asked  if  he  was  sick,  he  told  them,  while 
big  drops  of  cold  sweat  was  dropping  off  his  face, 
that  he  'd  had  a  terrible  nightmare.  He  thought  he 
was  yoked  up  with  a  yellow,  bobtailed,  lophorned, 
lame  steer  and  was  being  dragged  by  the  animal 
through  a  canyon  and  around  a  mountain  day  after 
day  in  a  hot,  broiling  sun,  while  crowds  of  witless 
Englishmen  and  jibbering  cowboys  were  looking  on. 
He  insisted  on  saddling  up  and  going  back  through  the 
moonlight  to  the  mountain  and  see  if  old  Buck  was 
still  there.  When  they  arrived,  after  waiting  awhile, 


59  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

they  heard  something  coming  down  the  canyon,  and 
in  the  bright  moonlight  they  could  see  old  Buck  pain 
fully  limping  along,  stopping  now  and  then  to  rest. 
A  cowboy  reported  finding  old  Buck  dead  on  his 
well-worn  trail  a  week  afterwards.  But  no  one  ever 
rides  that  way  moonlight  nights  now,  as  so  many 
cowboys  have  a  tradition  that  old  Buck's  ghost  still 
limps  down  the  canyon  moonlight  nights. 


Counting  "did  Buck '. '' 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  55 

OLD  BUCK'S  GHOST. 


Down  in  New  Mexico,  where  the  plains  are  brown  and  sere, 
There  is  a  ghostly  story  of  a  yellow  spectral  steer. 
His  spirit  wanders  always  when  the  moon  is  shining  bright; 
One  horn  is  lopping  downwards,  the  other  sticks  upright. 

On  three  legs  he  comes  limping,  as  the  fourth  is  sore  and  lame; 

His  left  eye  is  quite  sightless,  but  still  this  steer  is  game. 

Many  times  he  was  bought  and  counted  by  a  dude  with  a  mon 
ocle  in  his  eye; 

The  steer  kept  limping  round  a  mountain  to  be  counted  by  that 
guy. 

When  footsore,  weary,  gasping,  he  laid  him  down  at  last, 
His  good  eye  quit  its  winking;   counting  was  a  matter  of  the 

past; 

But  his  spirit  keeps  a  tramping  'round  that  mountain  trail, 
And  that's  the  cause,  says  Packsaddle,  that  I  have  told  this 

tale. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 


TKUE  SNAKE  STOKIES. 

Then  we  all  got  to  telling  true  snake  stories. 
Eatumup  Jake  said  down  on  the  Republican  River  hi 
western  Kansas  the  rattle-snakes  were  awful  thick 
when  the  country  was  first  settled.  He  said  they  had 
their  dens  in  the  Chalk  Bluffs  along  the  Republican 
and  Solomon  rivers;  said  these  bluffs  were  full  of  them. 
It.  was  nothing  for  the  first  settlers  in  that  country  to 
get  together  of  a  Sunday  afternoon  in  the  fall  of  the 
year  and  kill  15,000  rattle-snakes  at  one  bluff  as  they 
lay  on  the  shelves  of  rock  that  projected  out  from  its 
face.  He  said  the  snake  dens  were  two  or  three 
miles  apart,  all  the  way  along  the  river  for  a  hundred 
miles,  and  wrhen  somebody  would  start  in  to  killing 
them  at  one  place,  why  all  the  snakes  at  that  den  would 
start  in  to  rattling.  Then  the  snakes  at  the  dens  on 
each  side  of  where  they  was  killing  them  would  wake 
up  and  hear  their  neighbors'  rattle,  and  then  they  'd 
get  mad  and  begin  to  rattle  and  that  would  wake  up 

56 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK.  57 

the  snake  dens  beyond  them  and  start  them  to  rat 
tling.  And  in  an  hour's  time  all  the  snakes  for  a 
hundred  miles  along  that  country  would  be  rattling. 
When  these  two  hundred  million  snakes  all  got  to 
rattling  at  once  you  could  hear  them  one  hundred 
miles  away  and  all  the  settlers  in  eastern  Kansas 
would  go  into  their  cyclone  cellars.  But  after  the 
Populists  got  so  thick  in  Kansas,  if  they  did  hear  the 
snakes  get  to  rattling,  they  just  thought  five  or  six 
Populists  got  together  and  was  talking  politics. 

Then  Packsaddle  Jack  told  about  a  bull-snake 
family  he  used  to  know  in  southern  Kansas.  He 
said  the  whole  family  had  yellow  bodies  beautifully 
marked  below  the  waist,  but  from  their  waist  up,  in 
cluding  their  necks  and  heads,  was  a  shiny  coal  black. 
The  old  man  bull^snake  would  beller  just  like  a  bull 
when  he  was  stirred  up.  The  old  lad}'  bull-snake  had 
sort  of  an  alto  Aroice  and  the  younger  master  and 
misses  bull-snakes  went  from  soprano  and  tenor  down 
to  a  hiss.  He  said  this  family  of  bull-snakes  weie 
very  proud  of  their  clothes,  as  there  weren't  any  other 
bull-snakes  dressed  like  them,  all  the  other  bull- 
snakes  being  just  a  plain  yellow.  And  old  Mrs.  Bull- 
snake  used  to  talk  about  her  ancestors  on  her  fa- 


58  COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

ther's  side,  and  ishe  called  the  scrubby  willow  under 
which  they  had  their  den  the  family  tree,  and  talked 
about  the  family  tree  half  her  time.  She  never  al 
lowed  her  daughters  to  associate  with  any  of  the 
common  young  bull-snakes,  but  kept  them  coiled  up 
around  home  under  the  family  tree  till  they  got  very 
delicate,  being  in  the  shade  all  the  time.  All  the 
snakes  in  the  country  looked  up  to  this  family  of  half- 
black  bull-snakes  and  they  were  known  by  the  name 
of  Half-Blacks.  All  the  old  female  bull-snakes  in  the 
country  around  there,  if  they  had  just  a  distant 
speaking  acquaintance  with  Mrs.  Half-Black,  always 
spoke  of  her  as  "my  dear  intimate  friend  Mrs.  Half 
Black."  Old  Papa  Half-Black  set  around  all  swelled 
up  with  unwary  toads  he  'd  swallowed  when  they 
came  under  the  family  tree  for  shade,  and  while  he 
didn't  say  much  about  his  ancestry  and  family  tree, 
yet  he  was  mighty  proud  and  dignifieoT.  Sometimes 
he  would  slip  off  from  his  illustrious  family,  and  go 
ing  over  the  hill  where  there  was  a  little  sand  blow 
out  and  something  to  drink,  he  'd  meet  some  of  the 
Miss  Common  Bull-snakes,  and  then  he  would  unbend 
a  good  deal  from  his  dignity  and  treat  them  with 
great  familiarity,  an3  after  having  a  few  drinks  call 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  59 

them  his  sweethearts  and  get  them  to  sing  "The 
Good  Old  Summer  Time,"  and  he  would  join  in  the 
chorus  with  his  heavy  bass  voice,  and  they  would  all 
be  very  gay.  Of  course,  he  never  told  old  Mrs.  Half- 
Black  about  these  meetings,  cause  she  wouldn't  un 
derstand  them. 

But  with  all  their  glory  this  aristocratic  family 
of  half-black  bull-snakes  came  to  an  untimely  end. 
One  day  there  came  along  a  couple  of  mangy  Kansas 
hogs  and  rooted  the  whole  family  out  and  eat  them 
up  as  fast  as  they  came  to  them;  rooted  up  the  fam 
ily  tree  also. 

We  all  cheered  Packsaddle  Jack's  bull-snake 
story. 

We  now  all  got  to  telling  stories  about  fellows 
we  knowed  who  had  died  from  mad  skunk  bites,  said 
skunks  creeping  up  on  them  in  the  night  when  they 
were  sleeping  outdoors.  When  we  got  to  the  end  of 
our  mad  skunk  stories  wre  turned  our  attention  to 
tales  of  friends  of  ours  who  had  died  from  rattle 
snake  bites.  It  seemed  each  of  us  had  dozens  of 
dead  friends  who  had  met  their  doom  by  crawling  in 
to  a  roundup  bed  at  night  without  shaking  the  blank 
ets  only  to  find  a  couple  of  rattle-snakes  coiled  up 


60 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 


inside.  The  more  we  told  the  stories  the  more  snake 
bite  antidote  we  imbibed,  till  we  got  so  full  of  the 
antidote  it  ?s  safe  to  say  that  it  would  have  been  sure 
death  for  any  poisonous  reptile  to  have  bitten  any  man 
in  the  crowd.  Some  of  us  wept  a  good  deal  over  the 
memory  of  our  dead  friends  and  other  things,  and  all 
together  this  was  about  the  most  enjoyable  half  day 
of  our  journey. 


CHAPTER   IX. 


CHUCKWAGON'S  DEATH. 

I  now  come  to  a  point  in  my  story  that  is  fraught 
with  such  grief  and  sorrow  that  I  would  gladly  pass 
over  if  I  could,  but  my  story  wouldn't  be  complete 
without  this  sad  chapter. 

We  were  slowly  climbing  Sherman  Hill,  some  of 
us  pushing  on  the  train,  some  using  pinch  bars — as 
we  always  did  where  there  was  a  hard  pull — when  all 
of  a  sudden  the  engine  broke  down  and  the  train 
started  slowly  back  down  the  hill.  While  the  train 
didn't  go  very  fast  on  account  that  the  wheels  hadn't 
been  greased  since  we  started,  as  the  company  was 
economizing  on  oil,  anH  the  train  stopped  when  it  got 
to  the  bottom  of  the  hill,  yet  it  was  so  discouraging 
and  heart-sickening  to  poor  old  Chuckwagon  that  he 
died  almost  immediately  after  this  took  place. 

He  had  been  gradually  growing  weaker  lately,  not 
being  able  .to  keep  anything  on  his  stomach  except  a 
little  Limburger  cheese  since  the  night  he  had  the 

61 


62  COWBOY  LIFE   OX  THE  SIDETRACK. 

skunk  dream.  He  always  imagined  this  dream  to  be 
a  warning,  and  had  low  sinking  spells  at  times,  spe 
cially  when  the  two  sheepmen  and  Jackdo  were  all 
three  in  the  car  in  at  once,  and  at  such  times  we  were 
obliged  to  take  a  prod  pole  and  drive  Jackdo  and  the 
two  sheepmen  out  the  car  and  make  them  ride  on  top 
till  Chuck  revived.  We  made  some  smelling  salts 
out  of  asafoetida  and  Limburger  cheese  for  him  to  use 
when  he  had  these  fainting  spells,  as  he  frequently 
did  when  the  car  got  warm  and  Jackdo  and  the  sheep 
men  were  there.  We  also  found  the  decomposed  body 
of  a  dog  lying  beside  the  track  one  day,  and  gather 
ing  it  up  in  a  gunnysack  would  hang  it  round  Chuck's 
neck  at  night  when  the  sheepmen  and  Jackdo  had  to 
ride  Inside,  and  in  that  way  he  would  get  a  little  sleep. 
But  if  he  happened  to  be  out  of  reach  of  any  of  these 
remedies  when  one  of  the  sheepmen  come  near  him 
he  immediately  began  to  strike  at  the  end  of  his  nose 
and  mutter  something  about  glue  factories. 

Poor  old  Chuckwagon!  In  my  mind  I  can  still 
see  his  ruggged,  tear-stained  face  as  he  would  pite- 
ously  hold  out  his  hands  for  his  sack  of  decomposed 
dog  when  one  of  the  sheepmen  or  Jackdo  came  in  the 
way-car. 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  53 

All  I  know  of  Chuekwagon's  life  before  lie  come 
West  was  what  he  told  me  on  this  trip.  He  said  as 
a  boy  lie  had  worked  cleaning  sewers  in  Chicago  and 
after  that  was  watchman  for  glue  factories  till  lie 
come  West,  but  with  all  this  training  had  never  got 
hardened  enough  to  stand  the  smell  of  Jackdo,  Cotts- 
wool  Canvasback  and  Kambolet  Bill  in  a  way-car. 

He  died  like  a  hero.  When  we  see  he  was  going, 
Paeksaddle  Jack  took  a  prod  pole  and  drove  Jackdo 
and  the  sheepmen  down  the  track  a  ways  so  Chuck 
could  breathe  same  purer  air.  Then  we  gave  him  a 
whiff  of  decomposed  dog,  propped  him  up  against  an 
old  railroad  tie  and  took  his  post-mortem  statement  in 
writing  as  to  cause  of  his  death.  We  let  some  cattle 
men  who  had  formed  themselves  into  a  committee  for 
the  public  safety  up  in  the  New  Fork  country,  in 
Wyoming,  have  his  statement.  We  now  went  to  the 
nearest  town,  got  the  best  coffin  we  could  and  after 
selecting  a  place  right  under  a  big  cliff,  we  buried  old 
Chuck  and  piled  up  a  lot  of  rock  at  the  grave  so  we 
could  come  back  and  get  him  and  give  him  a  good  de 
cent  burial  on  his  own  ranch.  We  didn't  have  much 
funeral  services,  but  Dillbery  Ike  made  a  talk  which 
just  filled  all  our  ideas  exactly,  and  here  is  what  he 
said: 

5- 


64  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

DILLBERY  IKE'S  TRIBUTE  TO  CHUCK  WAGON. 
Chuck  was  a  good  man.  While  he  never  joined 
church  and  drunk  a  heap  of  whiskey,  bucked  faro  and 
monte,  cussed  mighty  hard  at  times,  yet  he  always 
paid  his  debts.  Never  killed  other  people's  beef  and 
didn't  take  mavericks  till  they  was  plum  weaned  from 
the  cows.  He  believed  mighty  strong  in  ghosts  and 
God  Almighty;  believed  in  angels,  'cause  he  loved  a 
little,  blonde,  blue-eyed  girl  away  up  in  the  mountains 
in  Idaho.  He  had  a  strong  belief  in  heaven,  but  a 
heap  stronger  one  in  hell,  'cause  he  said  there  must 
be  some  place  to  keep  the  sheepmen  by  themselves  in 
the  other  world.  He  never  had  a  father  or  mother 
and  no  bringing  up,  but  lived  a  better  life  'cording 
to  what  he  knowed  than  some  people  who  knowed 
more.  He  always  gave  his  big-jawed  cattle  to  Injuns 
to  eat,  place  of  hauling  the  meat  to  town  and  ped 
dling  it  out  to  white  folks.  He  'd  been  known  to  even 
cut  stove  wood  for  married  men  when  their  wives 
were  off  visiting,  and  once  he  gave  all  the  tobacco 
and  cigarette  papery  he  had  to  a  sick  Digger  Injun 
and  went  without  for  a  wreek  himself.  He  always  let 
the  tenderfoot  visitor  at  the  ranch  fish  all  the  strips 
of  bacon  out  the  beans  and  pretended  to  be  looking 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  55 

the  other  way,  and  when  old  Widow  Mulligan,  who 
ran  a  little  milk  ranch,  died  of  fever  and  left  four 
little  red-headed  kids  he  took  them  all  home  and  took 
care  of  them,  told  them  bear  stories  till  they  all  went 
to  sleep  nights  in  his  bed,  washed  them,  fed  them  and 
never  said  a  cross  word,  and  even  when  they  drowned 
his  pet  cat  in  the  well,  let  out  his  pigs,  turned  the 
old  cow  in  his  garden  and  stoned  all  his  young  Ply 
mouth  Hock  chickens  to  death,  he  just  said,  "Poor 
little  fellars,  they  hain't  got  no  mother  now,"  and  he 
guessed  they  didn't  mean  any  harm,  and  took  care  of 
them  till  a  relative  came  and  took  them  away. 

We  figured  all  these  things  up  and  made  up  our 
minds  that  no  fair-minded  Grod  would  send  a  great, 
big-hearted,  innocent  cowman,  who  never  harmed 
anybody  in  his  life,  to  a  place  like  hell  was  supposed 
to  be.  Even  if  God  couldn't  let  him  into  heaven  on 
'count  of  his  wearing  his  pants  in  his  boots,  eating 
with  his  knife  at  the  table  place  of  his  fork,  drinking 
his  coffee  out  his  saucer  and  other  ignorant  ways,  yet 
He  might  give  him  a  pretty  decent  place  away  out 
where  there  wasn't  any  sheepmen,  and  if  He  didn't 
have  somebody  handy  to  keep  old  Chuck  company  just 
let  him  have  a  deck  or  two  of  cards  to  play  solitaire 
wiith  and  Chuck  wouldn't  mind. 


66  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK. 

Old  Chuckwagon  was  mighty  fond  of  white-faced 
cattle,  and  just  as  he  breathed  his  last  he  sorter 
roused  up  and  stretched  out  his  arms,  with  his  eyes 
as  bright  as  'lectric  lamps,  and  said:  "Boys,  I  see  an 
other  country,  just  lots  of  big  grass,  with  running 
streams  of  water,  big  herds  of  white-face  cattle,  and 
they  are  all  mavericks,  not  a  brand  on  'em,  and  not  a 
.sheep-wagon  in  sight."  And  them  was  his  last  words. 

He  lay  on  the  sidetrack,  poor  honest  Chuckwagon, 
The  pallor  of  death  creeping  fast  o'er  his  brow; 

Said  he  to  the  cowboys,  "My  rope  is  a  dragging, 
I'm  going  o'er  the  divide  and  going  right  now. 

"I  've  often  faced  death  with  the  bronks  and  the  cattle, 

And  meeting  him  now  doesn't  take  so  much  sand, 
For  sooner  or  later  with  death  all  must  grapple, 
And  all  that  we  need  is  to  show  a  straight  brand. 

"I  would  like  one  more  glimpse  at  the  side  of  the  mountain, 

Before  I  saddle  up  for  Eternity's  divide; 
The  ranch  house,  the  meadow,  the  spring  like  a  fountain, 
But,  alas  for  poor  Chuck,  my  feet  are  hogtied." 

Down  his  bronzed  hardy  cheeks  the  warm  tears  were 
stealing, 

At  the  memory  of  his  cow  ranch,  so  pleasant  and  bright. 
A  smile  like  an  angel  played  over  each  feature, 

And  the  soul  of  the  cowboy  rode  out  of  sight. 


CHAPTER  X. 


THE  DISAPPEARANCE  OF  THE  SHEEPMEN. 

After  we  buried  Chuckwagon  we  walked  across  a 
bend  in  the  road  and  caught  up  with  the  stock  train 
and  strolled  on  ahead  with  sad  hearts  and  silent  lips 
till  we  arrived  at  the  top  of  Sherman  Hill.  We  pre 
pared  to  wait  for  the  arrival  of  the  stock  train,  so 
selecting  a  site  on  the  south  side  of  Ames  monument, 
we  built  a  snow  hut  by  rolling  up  huge  snowballs  and 
piling  them  up  one  on  top  of  the  other  for  walls  to  a 
height  of  about  seven  and  one-half  feet,  leaving  a 
space  for  our  room  of  about  twelve  feet  square  inside, 
and  gradually  drawing  them  together  at  the  top  for  a 
roof,  and  making  a  big  snowball  for  the  door.  After 
it  was  all  finished  we  let  the  sheepmen  and  Jackdo  go 
over  across  the  canyon  about  two  miles  and  build  an 
other  hut  for  themselves.  We  moved  our  luggage 
(which  we  had  carried  to  lighten  up  the  train)  inside, 
and  after  closing  the  door  with  the  big  snowball,  we 
ate  a  hearty  supper  of  boiled  rawhide,  and  spreading 

67 


68  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK. 

down  a  sheet  of  mist,  we  rolled  up  in  a  blanket  of  fog 
and  went  to  sleep. 

We  hadn't  no  more  than  got  to  sleep  before  a 
lightning  rod  agent  by  the  name  of  Woods  came  along 
and  put  up  lightning  rods  all  over  our  snow  hut  and 
woke  us  up  to  sign  |350  worth  of  notes  for  the  rods. 
This  matter  attended  to.  we  went  to  sleep  again  and 
the  lightning  rod  agent  went  over  across  the  canyon 
to  "the  sheepmen's  hut  and  put  rods  on  it.  This  man 
Woods  was  a  good  fellar,  got  people  to  sign  notes  by 
the  wholesale,  but  never  did  anything  so  low  as  to  col 
lect  them,  just  turned  them  over  to  a  lawyer  and  let 
him  attend  to  that.  Pie  was  always  broke  and  bor 
rowed  your  last  "five"  in  a  way  that  endeared  him  to 
you  for  life.  He  never  bothered  with  paying  for  any 
thing,  always  said,  "Just  put  it  down,  or  charge  it," 
in  such  a  lofty  way  T;hat  everyone  in  hearing  would 
begin  to  hunt  for  pencils  right  off.  He  put  lightning 
rods  on  everything,  even  to  prairie  dogs'  houses  and 
ant  heaps,  took  anybody's  note  with  any  kind  of 
signature. 

Cottswopl  Canvasback,  Kambolet  Bill  and  Jackdo 
couldn't  write,  but  he  had  Rambofet  Bill  make  his 
mark  to  the  note  and  then  Cottswool  Canvasback  and 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  QQ 

Jackdo  witnessed  it  by  affixing  their  mark;  then  he 
had  Cottswool  Canvasback  sign  his  mark  as  security 
and  Rambolet  Bill  and  Jackdo  witness  the  signature 
with  their  marks;  then  had  Jackdo  sign  his  mark  as 
security  and  Rambolet  and  Cottswool  witness  it  with 
their  marks. 

We  had  put  out  a  signal  flag  on  our  snow  hut  so 
the  trainmen  would  know  where  to  find  us  when  they 
came  along  with  the  stock.  When  we  awoke  next 
morning  and  went  outdoors  a  strange  sight  greeted 
our  astonished  vision.  There  had  come  a  *chinook 
wind  in  the  night  and  melted  the  snow  off  up  to  with 
in  one  hundred  feet  of  our  altitude.  As  Jackdo  and 
the  two  sheepmen  had  built  their  snow  residence 
about  150  feet  lower  altitude  on  the  other  side  of  the 
canyon,  their  house  had  melted  down  over  their  heads, 
and  as  they  were  nowhere  in  sight  it  was  safe  to  pre 
sume  they  had  been  carried  away  in  the  ruins.  We 
had  quite  an  argument  now,  whether  we  should  try  to 
find  them  or  not.  Dillbery  Ike  maintained  they  was 
human  beings  and  as  such  was  entitled  to  our  look 
ing  for  them.  Packsaddle  Jack  said  he  didn't  know 


*For  the  benefit  of  our  readers  who  do  not  know  wliHt  a  chinook  wind 
is,  I  will  explain  that  it  is  a  hot,  violent  coast  wind  which  blows  at  certain 
periods  of  the  year  at  certain  altitudes  in  the  West. 


70  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

for  sure  whether  sheepmen  were  humans  or  not.  He 
guessed  it  was  a  mighty  broad  word  and  covered  a 
heap  of  things.  Eatumup  Jake  said  he  reckoned  they 
would  turn  up  all  right,  that  sheepmen  didn't  die 
very  easy,  that  he  knowed  them  to  pack  off  more  lead 
than  an  antelope  would  and  still  live;  he  guessed  be 
ing  washed  off  the  side  of  the  mountain  wouldn't  kill 
them.  He  said  we  'd  better  wait  till  the  trainmen 
came  along  and  then  report  the  matter  to  them,  as  the 
sheepmen  would  want  damages  off  the  railroad  or 
somebody  and  we'd  better  not  hunt  them  up  too 
quick  as  ft  might  jeopardize  their  case.  We  all 
agreed  there  was  some  difference  in  sheepmen,  and 
that  Rambolet  Bill  and  Cottswool  Canvasback  cer 
tainly  belonged  to  the  better  class,  and  we  all  fell  to 
telling  stories  of  the  generous,  open-handed  things 
that  sheepmen  of  our  acquaintance  had  done. 

Packsaddle  Jack  said  he  knowed  a  sheepman 
once  by  the  name  of  Black  Face,  who  was  so  good- 
hearted  that  he  paid  $20  towards  one  of  his  herder's 
doctor  bill  when  he  lost  both  feet  by  their  being 
frozen  in  the  great  Wyoming  blizzard  in  '94.  The 
herder  stayed  with  the  sheep  for  seventy-two  hours 
in  the  Bad  Lands  and  saved  all  the  3,000  head  except 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK.  71 

seven,  that  got  over  the  bank  of  the  creek  into  ice 
and  water  and  drowned.  The  herder  having  got  all 
but  these  seven  head  out  and  getting  his  feet  wet 
they  froze  so  hard  that  Black  Face  said  his  feet  was 
rattling  together  like  rocks  when  he  found  him  still 
herding  the  sheep.  Of  course,  the  sheep  might  have 
all  perished  in  the  storm  if  the  herder  didn't  stay  with 
them,  and  of  course,  the  herder  didn't  have  anything 
to  eat  the  entire  three  days  in  the  storm,  as  he  was 
miles  from  any  habitation  and  that  way  saved  Black 
Face  30  cents  in  grub.  But  we  all  agreed  that  while 
Black  Face  would  feel  the  greatest  anguish  at  the  loss 
of  the  seven  sheep  and  giving  up  the  $20,  yet  the  sat 
isfaction  of  doing  a  generous  deed  and  the  pride  he 
would  experience  when  it  was  mentioned  in  the  item 
column  of  the  local  county  paper  would  partially  al 
leviate  that  anguish. 

Eatumup  Jake  said  he  knew  a  sheepman  by  the 
name  of  Hatchet  Face  from  Connecticut,  who  had 
sheep  ranches  out  there  in  Utah,  and  he  was  so  kind- 
hearted  that  when  one  of  his  herders  kept  his  sheep 
in  a  widow  neighbor's  field  till  they  ate  up  everything 
in  sight,  even  her  lawn  and  flower  garden,  he  apolo 
gized  to  the  widow  when  she  returned  from  nursing 


72  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

a  poor  family  through  a  spell  of  sickness,  and  told  her 
he  would  pay  her  something,  and  while  he  never  did 
pay  her  anything,  yet  he  always  seemed  sorry,  while 
a  lot  of  sheepmen  would  have  laid  awake  nights  to 
have  studied  ja  way  how  to  eat  out  the  widow  again. 
Eatumup  Jake  said  old  Hatchet  Face,  when  he  prayed 
in  church  Sundays  (he  being  a  strict  Presbyterian),  he 
always  prayed  for  the  poor  and  widows  and  orphans, 
and  that  showed  he  had  a  good  heart,  to  use  what  in 
fluence  he  had  with  God  Almighty  and  get  Him  to  do 
something  for  widows  and  orphans  and  poor  people. 

Dillbery  Ike  said  he  knew  a  sheepman  by  the 
name  of  Shearclose,  and  while  he  never  gave  his 
hired  help  any  meat  to  eat  except  old  broken-mouthed 
ewes  in  the  winter  and  dead  lambs  in  the  spring  and 
summer,  and  herded  his  sheep  around  homesteaders' 
little  ranches  till  their  milk  cows  mighty  near  starved 
to  death,  yet  old  Shearclose  gave  |5  for  a  ticket  to 
a  charjty  ball  once  when  a  list  of  the  names  of  all  the 
people  who  bought  tickets  was  printed  in  the  coun 
ty  paper. 

After  we  summed  all  these  things  up,  our  hearts 
got  so  warm  thinking  of  these  acts  of  generosity  by 
sheepmen  that  we  concluded  to  make  a  hunt  for  Bam- 


C.  J.  Lan°,t  General  Freight*  Agent-  and  Pass  DlsCnl'uter  to 
Live  Stock  Shippers. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE   SIDETRACK.  75 

bolet  Bill,  Cottswool  Canvasback  and  Jackdo.  We 
now  discussed  a  great  many  plans  how  to  rescue 
them.  While  we  were  arguing  the  stock  train  came, 
and  when  we  told  the  conductor,  he  immediately  had 
the  agent  wire  General  Freight  Agent  C.  J.  Lane  at 
Omaha  the  following  message: 

"Two  prominent  sheepmen  swept  away  by  fresh 
et  while  camping  ahead  of  special  stock  train  No. 
79531.  Please  wire  instructions  how  to  find  them." 

Lane  immediately  wired  back  not  to  find  them, 
and  if  there  was  any  trace  left  of  them  to  obliterate 
it  at  once. 

JACKDO 's  STORY  OF  His  ESCAPE. 

• 

We  now  sauntered  down  Sherman  Hill  ahead  of 
the  train  to  Cheyenne,  expecting  to  get  some  help 
there  to  find  Eambolet  Bill  and  Cottswool  Canvas- 
back,  and  was  much  surprised  to  discover  Jackdo 
asleep  riding  on  the  trucks  of  a  car  in  a  special  that 
went  by,  and  on  waking  him  up  he  told  us  the  follow 
ing  story  of  his  escape: 

He  said  when  the  flood  came  he  got  astride  a  big 
snowball  and  making  a  compass  out  of  a  piece  of 
lightning  rod  he  pointed  it  for  the  north  star  so  as  to 


76  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK. 

not  lose  his  bearings  and  started  for  Cheyenne.  He 
said  it  was  a  wild  ride,  that  he  passed  cattle  and 
horses,  forests  and  ranches  in  auick  succession  and  his 
snowball  was  almost  worn  out  when  he  got  below  the 
altitude  of  the  chinook  wind  and  struck  a  country  of 
ice  and  snow  again.  But  it  was  impossible  to  stop, 
he  had  acquired  such  a  momentum  going  down  the 
mountain  that  he  slid  through  nine  miles  of  cactus 
and  prickly  pears  without  having  changed  the  sitting 
position  he  started  in.  However,  after  his  snowball 
wore  out,  he  just  held  up  his  feet  and  kept  on  till  he 
struck  a  special  stock  train  going  East,  and  after 
knocking  two  of  the  cars  off  the  rails  and  breaking 
the  bumpers  of  a  half-dozen  more,  he  checked  up 
enough  to  crawl  on  a  brake  beam  and  go  to  sleep.  He 
knew  nothing  of  Kambolet  Bill  and  Cottswool  Can- 
vasback. 


CHAPTER   XL 


OUR  ARRIVAL  IN  CHEYENNE. 

We  arrived  in  Cheyenne,  and  after  reporting  to 
the  dispatcher  what  tame  our  special  stock  train 
would  arrive,  we  exposed  Jackdo  to  the  gentle  breeze, 
which  is  always  on  tap  in  Cheyenne,  and  it  blew  all 
the  cactus  slivers  out  of  his  anatomy  that  he  had  ac 
cumulated  in  his  nine  miles  slide  in  just  thirteen  sec 
onds.  We  then  started  out  to  see  the  town.  We 
asked  an  expressman  on  the  corner  of  Main  Street — 
he  was  the  only  live  human  being  in  sight — what  was 
the  main  features  of  Cheyenne.  He  said  Tom  Horn 
and  Senator  Warren.  We  asked  him  what  they  was 
noted  for,  and  he  saicl  that  Tom  Horn  was  noted  for 
killing  people  that  took  things  that  didn't  belong  to 
them  and  then  blowing  his  horn  about  it  afterwards, 
and  Senator  Warren  was  noted  for  building  wire 
fences  on  government  land  and  taking  everything  in 
sight. 

Not  seeing  anyone  on  the  streets,  we  asked  him 
77 


78  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK. 

if  it  was  Sunday,  and  he  said  every  day  was  Sunday 
in  Cheyenne  except  when  they  had  a  political  rally, 
and  then  it  was  a  durn  Democratic  funeral  from  sun 
to  sun,  burying  the  Democratic  party  over  and  over 
again,  they  rehearsed  them  same  old  services.  When 
ever  people  saw  the  politicians  on  the  streets  with 
clean  shirts  on  they  knew  the  Democratic  party  was 
going  to  have  another  funeral.  The  folks  in  Chey 
enne  was  always  going  to  church,  or  else  burying  the 
Democratic  party.  We  asked  him  what  the  prevail 
ing  religion  of  the  town  was,  and  he  said,  "High- 
priced  wool." 

Just  then  Senator  W-  -  came  along,  and  hear 
ing  of  the  disappearance  of  two  sheepmen,  and  it  be 
ing  near  election  time,  he  immediately  had  all  the 
troops  called  out,  got  together  a  vast  army  of  United 
States  deputy  marshals  and  wired  the  president  of  the 
Overland,  who  immediately  chartered  a  special  train 
loaded  with  detectives,  and  two  cars  loaded  with 
blood-hounds  in  charge  of  a  lawyer  by  the  name  of 
Ashby  from  Lincoln;  one  car  loaded  with  automobiles, 
two  cars  loaded  with  bottled  goods  and  other  useful 
supplies  and  two  pianos  with  pianola  attachments, 
seven  trunks  full  of  mechanical  music  in  air-tight  bot- 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  79 

ties,  and  one  steam  calliope  near  the  engine  on  a  flat 
car.  The  Governor  of  Wyoming  met  the  special  train 
at  Cheyenne,  and  after  issuing  a  proclamation  offering 
a  large  reward  for  the  sheepmen  dead  or  alive,  joined 
the  II.  P.  president  in  his  car.  They  now  started  the 
steam  calliope,  and  the  Governor  playing  one  of  (he 
pianola-attachment  pianos,  the  U.  P.  president  playing 
the  other.  The  state  chairman  of  the  Republican 
party  sang  the  old  familiar  hymn,  "Ninety  and  Nine 
Were  Safely  Laid  in  the  Shelter  of  the  Fold,"  and 

Senator   W —      -  made   a   speech   something   like 

this: 

He  said:  "Fellow  sheepmen  and  what  few  other 
citizens  there  are  in  Wyoming:  What's  the  matter 
with  the  sheep  business?  Have  we  deteriorated  in 
the  eyes  of  the  world  in  the  last  two  thousand  years? 
Who  writes  poetry  of  the  sheep  and  sheepherder  of 
the  present  time?  What  artist  puts  priceless  paint 
ings  on  canvass  of  the  sheep  business  to-day?  Why, 
fellow  sheepmen,  in  ancient  times  all  the  poetry  that 
was  written  was  of  the  shepherd  and  his  flock,  and  in 
every  palace,  in  the  most  conspicuous  place,  was  -a 
picture  of  a  tall  shepherd  with  venerable  beard  and 
flowing  locks,  with  his  serape  thrown  carelessly  over 

-6 


0  COWBO?  LIFE   ON  1HE  SIDETRACK. 

his  shoulder,  a  long  shepherd's  crook  in  his  hand,  lead 
ing  his  sheep  over  the  hill  into  some  fresher  pasture. 
And  when  the  people  saw  the  original  of  this  painting 
in  ve  ancient  time  appearing  over  the  hill  in  the  sun 
set  glow,  they  cried :  'Lo,  behold  the  shepherd  cometh.' 
Now  what  do  they  say?  This  is  what  you  hear:  'Well, 
look  at  that  lousy  sheepherding  scoundrel  coming  oyer 
the  divide  with  his  sheep.  Boys,  get  your  black  masks 
and  the  wagon  spokes.' 

"Now,"  he  says,  "wouldn't  that  Ram  you?  What 
would  our  party  have  amounted  to  in  Wyoming  if  I 
hadn't  Bucked  everything  in  sight?  I've  Lambed  the 
stuffing  out  of  the  Democrats  and  Pulled  Wool  over 
the  eyes  of  the  would-be  party  leaders  till  we  have 
Pretty  Good  Grazing  and  Fair  We(a)thers. 

"In  a  few  days  we  will  be  called  on  to  decide  a 
great  question  at  the  polls,  whether  Billy  Bryan  will 
build  your  house  out  of  cold,  clammy,  frosty  silver 
bricks,  or  whether  we  will  have  houses  built  out  of  all 
wool.  You  must  make  a  choice  between  the  two.  If 
you  vote  for  me,  it  means  a  good,  warm  woolen  house, 
good  woolen  underclothes,  good  woolen  overclothes." 

Judge  Carey  tried  to  say  something  about  a  gold 
plank,  but  everybody  frowned  at  him  so  that  he  slunk 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  gj_ 

off  in  the  crowd  and  Shortly  afterwards  was  seen  in 
a  back  alley  having  a  heart-to-heart  talk  with  two 
bow-legged  cowpunchers  who,  while  they  did  not  know 
much  about  any  kind  of  gold,  let  alone  a  big  gold 
standard,  knew  anything  was  better  than  all  this  talk 
about  sheep  and  wool. 

Senator  W-  —  kept  talking  as  long  as  he 
could  keep  the  Governor  and  the  U.  P.  president  mak 
ing  music.  He  said  everybody  who  voted  right  could 
sit  on  his  right  hand  with  the  sheep,  otherwise  they 
would  have  to  'associate  with  the  goats  on  his  left  that 
was  herded  by  Billy  Bryan.  Some  of  the  crowd 
grumbled  about  associating  with  either  one,  but  the 
Senator  said  there  was  no  choice  if  they  stayed  in 
Wyoming. 

A  carriage  now  dashed  up,  all  emblazoned  with  a 
coat-of-arms,  which  consisted  of  a  panel  of  barbed  wire 
fence  with  a  rampant  sheep  leaning  against  it.  The 
Senator  entered  this  carriage,  rolled  away  and  the 
crowd  followed  him. 

Although  there  had  been  no  effort  made  to  find 
the  sheepmen,  yet  apparently  the  object  of  the  rail 
road  expedition  had  been  accomplished,  and  they  were 
about  to  return  when  they  discovered  that  three  of 


$2  COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

the  highest-priced  detectives  were  missing.    They  were 
found  almost  immediately  on  the  trail  of  the  man  who 
could  tell  why  a  life-long  Democrat  in  Wyoming,  as 
soon  as  he  starts  in  the  sheep  business,  gets  a  public 
office  in  place  of  a  life-long  Republican  who  didn't  own 
any  sheep.    The  detectives  were  called  off  the  trail  and 
the  president  of  the  great  Overland  began  his  return. 
We  heard  afterwards  that  Captain  Ashby  claimed  that 
two  of  the  most  valuable  blood-hounds  escaped  from 
the  hound  car  and  he  demanded  that  the  U.  P.  pay  him 
$700  for  the  dogs.    He  claimed  that  if  they  struck  the 
trail  of  anything  they  would  follow  it  to  the  death. 
A  couple  of  mangy  fox-hounds  were  found  dead  in  an 
alley  back  of  one  of  the  Cheyenne  hotels  the  next 
morning  after  the  president's  train  left,  and  as  it  was 
known  that  one  of  the  hotel  cooks  had  been  down  to 
the  train,  these  were  supposed  to  be  the  dogs,  and  the 
claim  was  allowed.     What  caused  their  death  was  a 
matter  of  conjecture.    There  was  quite  a  pile  of  hotel 
grub  laying  near  the  dogs.    The  hotel  boarders  differed 
in  opinion.    Some  said  the  dogs  died  of  indigestion  and 
some  said  of  starvation. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  POST-HOLE  DIGGER'S  GHOST. 

The  skeletons  of  Rambolet  Bill  and  Cottswool 
Canvasback  were  found  a  long  tiime  after  this  all  hap 
pened  by  one  of  the  Warren  Live  Stock  Company's 
fence  riders.  This  fence  commences  in  northeastern 
Colorado  near  the  27th  degree  of  longitude  west  from 
Washington,  and  extends  west  over  hills  and  valleys, 
plains  and  mountains,  through  all  kinds  of  latitudes, 
longitudes  and  vicissitudes.  There  is  a  legend  in  re 
gard  to  the  building  of  this  fence  that  is  told  in  whis 
pers  when  the  fire  burns  low  of  a  night  in  western 
homes.  It  runs  something  like  this: 

Years  ago  Senator  Warren,  Manager  Gleason  and 
some  other  Massachusetts  Yankees  started  in  the 
sheep  business  in  southern  Wyoming  and  northern  Col 
orado,  and  as  the  country  was  large  they  thought  it 
would  be  a  good  thing  to  fence  in  a  few  hundred  thou 
sand  acres  of  government  land  and  save  the  grass  so 
fenced  in  case  of  hard  winters  and  other  things  and 

83 


84  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

graze  their  sheep  in  this  enclosure  only  when  there 
was  no  more. grass  around  the  little  homesteads  taken 
here  and  there  by  settlers.    So  hiring  a  young  German 
from  the  Old  Country,  who  couldn't  speak  a  word  of 
English,  to  dig  the  post-holes,  they  got  him  a  brand- 
new  shovel,  a  post-bar  about  eight  feet  long,  the  fam 
ous  receipt  for  cooking  jackrabbits,  and  started  him 
digging  near  the  27th  degree  of  longitude  west  from 
Washington.    Pointing  toward  the  setting  sun  in  the 
west,  they  went  off  and  left  him.     The  German  was 
never  seen  alive  again,  but  he  left  a  never-ending  line 
of  post-holes  behind  him.  The  Warren  Live  Stock  Com 
pany,  it  is  said,  put  on  a  great  many  men  setting  the 
posts  in  these  holes  and  stringing  barbed  wire   on 
them,  and  although  they  kept  ever  increasing  the  force 
that  built  the  fence,  yet  they  never  caught  up  with  the 
German,  and  time  after  time  the  post-setters  would 
come  to  the  top  of  a  high  hill  or  a  range  of  mountains 
and  thought  they  would  come  in  sight  of  the  German, 
only  to  see  a  long  line  of  post-holes  stretching  awaj? 
over  hill  and  valley  towards  the  setting  sun. 

After  a  while  the  Mormons  along  the  line  of  Utah 
and  Wyoming  complained  of  seeing  a  ghost  about  the 
time  they  drove  their  cows  home  of  an  evening.  They 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  35 

said  it  was  a  German  with  grizzled  locks  and  flowing 
beard,  w/ith  a  large  meerschaum  pipe  in  his  mouth  and 
a  shovel  in  one  hand  from  which  the  blade  was  worn 
down  to  the  -handle  and  a  post-bar  no  bigger  than  a 
drag  tooth  in  the  other  hand.    He  was  always  looking 
toward  the  setting  sun,  shading  his  eyes  with  his  hand 
and  muttering  these  words:  "Das  sinkende  Sonne,  ich 
fange  sie  nicht." 

But  when  they  approached  close  to  him,  or  spoke 
to  him,  he  immediately  vanished.  When  the  ghost 
wasn't  disturbed  it  seemed  to  be  digging  holes.  It 
would  go  through  the  motions  of  digging  a  hole  in  the 
ground,  then  rising  up,  take  thirteen  steps  in  a  west 
erly  direction,  look  back  to  see  if  the  line  was  straight,, 
dig  another  hole,  and  go  on.  Sometimes  the  ghost 
seemed  to  be  studying  a  well-worn  piece  of  paper, 
which  was  undoubtedly  the  receipt  for  cooking  jack- 
rabbits,  and  would  mutter  in  German,  "O  wohene,  Oj 
wohene  ist  er  gegangen,  mit  Schwanz  so  kurz  und  Ohr 
so  lang?  O  wohene  ist  mein  Hase  gegangen?" 

After  awhile  the  ghost  began  to  appear  in  western 
Utah  and  still  later  on  in  Nevada,  always  digging  a 
never-ending  imaginary   line   of  post^hbles.     No   one: 
never  knew  where  the  actual  post-holes  left  off  and' 
the  imaginary  ones  commenced. 


86  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK. 

As  the  Routt  County  cattlemen  in  western  Colo 
rado  never  allowed  any  sheepmen  to  encroach  on  their 
range,  and  they  always  killed  all  the  sheep  and  sheep 
men  who  dared  to  intrude,  of  course,  the  Warren  Live 
Stock  had  to  stop  building  fence  west  and  turn  north' 
before  they  got  there. 

When  the  ghastly  skeletons  of  Rambolet  Bill  and 
Cottswool  Canvasback  were  found  lying  by  this  fence, 
their  bones  picked  clean  by  coyotes  and  vultures,  ai 
small  book  was  picked  up  near  them  which  proved  to 
be  a  diary  of  their  adventures  and  last  hours  of  suffer 
ing.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Rambolet  Bill  and 
Cottswool  Canvasback  couldn't  write,  but  they  had 
drawn  pictures  in  the  book,  and  when  we  had  gotten, 
another  sheepman  who  couldn't  write  to  examine  th  m! 
he  read  them  just  like  print.  The  first  picture  was  a 
mountain  with  a  lot  of  marks,  which  was  interpreted 
as  the  flood,  and  two  men  drawn  crosswise  layinp) 
down  was  the  sheepmen  being  washed  away.  The 
next  picture  was  a  wire  fence  with  twTo  men  clinging 
to  it.  He  said  that  was  when  they  washed  into  the 
fence.  The  next  was  another  fence  picture  showing 
two  men  walking  along  it.  There  was  about  fifty 
pictures  after  this  one,  but  they  always  had  a  sect i OB 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  §7 

of  a  wire  fence  in  them.    Several  pictures  in  the  front 
part  of  the  book  showed  the  two  men  eating  jackrab- 
bits,  but  later  on  some  of  the  pictures  showed  them 
chasing  a  prairie  dog,  or  trying  to  slip  uj)  on  one,  in 
dicating  that  they  couldn't  find  any  more  jackrabbits. 
There   was   pictures   of   them   chewing  bits   of   their 
clothes  to  get  the  sheep  grease  out  of  them.     Then 
there  was  pictures  of  them  pointing  to  their  mouths 
and  stomachs,  finally  in  the  last  picture  they  were  ii> 
the  act  of  eating  a  piece  of  paper  with  some  writing  on 
it,  which  was  probably  the  receipt  for  cooking  'jack- 
rabbits.    They  probably  had  walked  hundreds  of  miles 
along  this  fence  before  they  finally  succumbed,  and  as 
it  was  a  country  where  they  had  herded  large  bands 
of  sheep  the  grass  had  become  so  exterminated  that 
no  jackrabbits  could  live  there,  and  consequently  Ram- 
bolet  Bill  and  Cottswool  Oanvasback  had  gradually 
starved  to  death. 


gg  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

Two  guileless  sheepmen  lay  sleeping  on  the  side  of  a  barren 

hill, 
One's  name  was  Cottswool  Canvasback,  the  other  was  Rambo- 

bolet  Bill. 
They  were  dreaming,  sweetly  dreaming,  the  fore  part  of  the 

night 
Of  grazing  their  sheep  on  a  homesteader's  claim  when  he  was 

out  of  sight. 

But  hark!    to   the  wind   that's   rising;    'tis  coming  fast  and 

warm; 

Little  recced  the  sleepers  that  it  would  do  them  harm; 
But  the  roar  was  growing  louder,  as  the  pine  trees  bent  and 

shook, 
And   the  birds  were  screaming  loudly,  "Beware  of  the  warm 

chinook." 

When  that  hot  blast  struck  their  hut,  built  out  of  walls  of  snow, 
That  house  turned  into  a  river  in  a  way  that  wasn't  slow; 
Washed  off  these  dreaming  sheepmen   in   the   middle  of  the 

night. 
As  the  waters  swept  the  dreamers  away,  what  must  have  been 

their  fright, 

Till  tangled  up  in  Warren's  fence  that's  built  o'er  mountain 

and  vale, 
They  followed  it  the  rest  of  their  lives,  winding  o'er  hill  and 

dale. 
When  found  by  the  annual  fence  rider,  they  long  since  had 

been  dead, 
Their  bon^s  picked  clean  by  coyotes,  with  vultures  hovering 

o'erhead. 


CHAPTER   XIII. 


GRAFTING. 

One  night  while  we  were  in  Cheyenne  we  were 
going  from  the  dispatcher's  office  down  to  our  way- 
car,  which  was,  as  usual,  about  one  mile  from  the 
depot.  The  railroad  company  had  quite  a  number  of 
police  on  duty  in  the  yards  to  watch  for  strikers,  there 
having  been  a  machinists'  strike  on  for  a  long  time. 
No  strikers  had  ever  come  around  the  railroad  yards 
nights  or  even  interfered  with  any  one  at  any  time, 
but  a  lot  of  fellows  who  wanted  soft  jobs  as  watch 
men  made  the  officials  of  the  road  think  the  strikers 
were  going  to  do  something,  and  these  night  watch 
men  had.  it  seems,  been  looking  for  a  long  time  for 
some  weak  tramp  to  beat  to  death  and  then  claim  the 
tramp  was  working  in  the  interest  of  the  strikers  and 
was  about  to  injure  " railroad  property  when  those 
awful  sleuths  caught  him  in  the  act  and  put  his  light 
out.  Thus  they  could  get  a  fresh  hold  on  their  jobs. 
However,  they  had  been  unable  to  catch  a  tramp,  and 


90  COWBOY  LIFE  ON   THE  SIDETRACK. 

as  they  had  to  get  somebody  in  order  to  hold  their 
jobs,  they  cornered  Dillbery  Ike,  who  had  loitered  be 
hind  the  rest,  and  one  of  the  valiant  watchmen  swip 
ing  him  over  the  head  with  a  six-shooter,  scalped  him 
as  clean  as  a  Sioux  Injun  would  have  done  it  with  a 
scalping  knife.  Hearing  Dillbery  Ike's  cries  for  help, 
we  went  to  his  rescue,  and  none  too  soon,  as  the 
watchman  was  still  beating  him.  When  we  had  got 
a  doctor  for  Dillbery,  of  course  the  first  thing  he  asked 
for  was  Ddllbery's  scalp,  so  he  could  sew  it  on  again. 
But  although  we  made  a  long  search  "for  the  scalp, 
we  only  found  a  few  bloody  hairs,  and  undoubtedly 
some  hungry  canine  prowling  around  had  ate  it  up. 
However,  the  railroad  company,  after  some  parleying, 
agreed  to  pay  for  having  a  new  one  grafted  on,  and 
as  grafting  is  the  long  suit  of  the  Cheyenne  doctors, 
there  was  a  general  scramble  for  the  job.  ;Twas 
finally  agreed  to  divide  the  job  amongst  them,  or 
rather  divide  the  space  and  the  money.  The  doctors 
immediately  advertised  for  contributions  of  pieces  of 
scalp  to  graft  on  Dillbery' a  head,  but  no  one  respond 
ing  they  offered  to  buy  some  sections  of  scalp,  and 
this  ad  was  responded  to  in  a  mysterious  way  by  a 
midnight  visitor  at  each  of  their  offices,  with  a  small 


Dillbery  Ike  c.s  a  fthipper,.  .     ,, 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK,  93 

piece  of  very  close  shaven  fresh  scalp,  which  the  vis 
itor  (who  was  a  woman  in  each  case  and  so  muffled  up 
that  her  features  couldn't  be  seen)  claimed  she  had 
cut  off  Billy's  or  Johnny's  or  Jimmy's  head  after  put 
ting  them  under  the  influence  of  ether. 

Each  of  the  four  doctors  paid  her  $25  and  hiked 
off  to  plaster  the  piece  of  hide  on  Dillbery  Ike's 
cranium.  The  scalped  place  ha'd  been  carefully  laid 
off  by  a  civil  engineer,  so  each  of  the  four  doctors 
knew  his  corner  in  the  block,  and  without  any  courte 
sies  to  one  another  they  each  trimmed  down  his  $25 
piece  of  hide  to  fit  his  corner  and  then  fastened  it  on. 
The  grafting  took  at  once  and  in  a  few  days  wras 
healed  over  nicely,  despite  the  fact  it  turned  out  that 
the  woman  had  taken  a  different  piece  of  scalp  off 
from  different  pet  animals  which  she  kept.  One  was 
a  pet  pig,  another  a  pet  goat,  another  a  pet  sheep  and 
the  fourth  a  pet  dog  of  the  Newfoundland  breed. 
When  the  hair,  wool  and  bristles  all  began  to  make 
a  luxuriant  growth  on  Dillbery's  new  scalp,  he  seemed 
to  be  more  or  less  affected  by  the  dispositions  of  each 
animal  from  which  a  part  of  the  wonderful  scalp  was 
removed,  and  when  the  different  colored  hair,  wool 
and  bristles  had  grown  to  a  good  length  the  effect  of 


94  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

this  unique  head  covering  was  very  striking  to  stran 
gers.  However,  Dillbery  ]ke  was  justly  proud  of  it, 
as  the  doctors  had  charged  the  Union  Pacific  f  1,200  for 
this  variegated  scalp.  Of  course,  no  other  cowpunch- 
er  could  boast  of  such  a  valuable  head  covering. 

There  was  one  little  white  bare  spot  in  the  center 
which  was  above  timber  line,  as  it  were,  where  the 
doctors,  making  these  four  corners,  had  each  been  a 
little  shy  of  material,  and  here  was  a  little  open,  or 
park,  on  the  top  of  his  head  in  which  sheep  ticks,  hog 
lice,  dog  fleas  and  goat  vermin  could  have  a  common 
ground  to  assemble  and  sun  themselves  in. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


THE  FILE. 

After  learning  the  fate  of  the  two  sheepmen  we 
prepared  to  leave  Cheyenne  and  catch  up  with  our 
stock  train,  which  we  figured  would  take  us  a  day  or 
so.  We  interviewed  the  dispatcher,  superintendent 
and  station  agent  at  Cheyenne,  asking  each  one  of 
them  to  wire  down  the  road  and  see  if  they  could  lo 
cate  the  speciail.  Every  one  of  them  wired  and  th? 
next  day  about  noon  the  agent  got  word  the  stock 
was  at  Egbert.  That  evening  the  superintendent  got 
a  message  that  they  was  between  Egbert  and  Pine 
Bluffs.  About  midnight  the  dispatcher  got  a  message 
that  they  were  hourly  expected  in  Pine  Bluffs,  so  we 
started  on  to  overtake  them. 

We  had  noticed  with  a  great  deal  of  anxiety  that 
the  wrinkles  had  commenced  to  accumulate  on  our 
cattle's  horns,  as  a  new  wrinkle  grows  each  year  after 
an  animail  is  two  years  old,  and  we  had  been  advised 
by  several  cattlemen  who  had  been  in  the  habit  of 

95 


96 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 


taking  their  cattle  by  rail  to  market  in  place  of  driv 
ing  them,  to  procure  files  and  rasps  and  remove  these 
wrinkles  before  we  got  to  Omaha.     So  we  secured  a 
lot  of  rasps  and  files  at  Cheyenne  and  had  Jackdo  car 
ry  them  for  us,  and  when  we  caught  up  with  the  train 
we  went  to  work  to  take  off  the  sign  of  old  age  which 
had  come  on  our  stock  since  shipping  them,  as  the 
Nebraska  corn-raisers  only  want  young  stock  to  feed 
When  we  first  loaded  our   cattle  we   were   informed 
that  they  were  a  little  bit  too  fat  for  the  killers,  Irit,  rf 
course,  the  next  day,  they  was  about  four  pounds  too 
thin  for  the  killers,  but  too  fat  for  the  feeders.    How 
ever,   by  this  time  they   were   nothing  but   petrified 
skeletons,    and    Dillbery    Ike    wanted    to    leave    the 
wrinkles  on  their  horns  'and  sell  the  entire 'outfit  for 
antiques.     But  the  more  we  discussed  it,  the   more 
we  made  up  our  minds  that  as  this  railroad  done  a 
large  business  hauling  stock,  the  antique  cattle  mar 
ket  must  be  overstocked.     So  we  finally  concluded  to 
take  off  the  wrinkles  that  had  grown  since  we  started 
and  sell  the  cattle  on  their  merits.    We  arranged  to 
run  two  day  shifts  and  one  night  shift  of  six  hours 
each  and  to  commence  up  next  the  engine  and  work 
back.     So  getting  in  the  first  car  we  climbed  astride 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  97 

the  critters'  necks  and  commenced  to  file.  Day  after 
day,  night  after  night,  we  kept  at  this  wearisome 
task,  and  when  our  files  and  rasps  became  worn  we 
sent  Jackdo  (who  wouldn't  work,  but  who  didn't  mind 
tramping)  to  the  nearest  town  to  get  fresh  files  and 
rasps.  Sometimes  we  became  discouraged  when  we 
saw  the  wrinkles  starting  again  that  we  had  removed 
to  commence  with,  and  our  eyes  filled  with  bitter 
tears  when  Ave  thought  how  much  better  it  would 
have  been  to  have  trailed  our  cattle  through,  or  even 
sold  them  to  some  Nebraska  sucker  and  taken  his 
draft  on  a  commission  house.  Dillbery  Ike,  who  had 
some  education,  made  up  a  song  for  us  to  sing  while 
we  were  at  work,  called  "The  Song  of  the  File,1'  and 
one  of  us  would  sing  a  verse  and  then  all  join  in  the 
chorus,  and  this  song  helped  us  a  great  deal.  Here 
it  is: 


98 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 


Oh!  we  are  a  bunch  of  cattlemen, 
Going  to  market  with  our  stock  again, 
And,  as  we  ship  over  a  road  that's  bum, 
The  days  they  go  and  the  days  they  come. 

Chorus. 

Cheer  up,  brave  hearts,  and  list  to  the  file  ^ 
As  the  wrinkles  keep  dropping  below  in  a  pile; 
Never  fear,  my  boys,  we  have  plenty  of  time 
To  remove  old  age  that's  known  by  the  wrinkle  sign. 

And  as  time  goes  by  the  wrinkles  grow 
On  the  horns  j£  the  cattl,  in  a  train  that's  slow; 

For  every  year  after  the  second  a  cow  that 's  born 
Another  wrinkle  grows  upon  each  horn. 

While  we  have  a  job  that  isn't  so  soft, 
A-trying  to  rasp  these  wrinkles  off, 
To  make  their  horns  look  smooth  and  bright, 
We  file  all  day  and  we  file  all  night. 

And  as  we  file,  we  whistle  and  sing, 
Trying  to  make  it  a  jolly  thing, 
To  remove  the  wrinkles  that  are  sure  to  grow 
On  the  horns  of  cattle  with  a  road  that's  slow. 

Astride  their  necks,  we  sit  and  file, 
And  through  our  tears,  we  try  to  smile. 
Cheer  up,  brave  hearts,  cheer  up,  we  say  again, 
As  we  camp  along  with  the  bum  stock  train. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


THE  CATTLE  STAMPEDE. 

The  boys  all  got  to  talking  about  stampedes  one 
night  while  we  were  waiting  on  a  sidetrack,  and  I  re 
lated  to  them  an  experience  of  my  own. 

A  number  of  years  ago,  I  bought  some  15,000 
steers  in  southern  Arizona,  and  shipping  them  to  Den 
ver,  Colorado,  divided  them  up  into  herds  of  about 
3,500  head  in  each  herd  and  started  to  trail  these 
herds  north  to  Wyoming.  About  4,000  head  of  these 
steers  were  from  4  to  10  years  old  and  were  known  as 
outlaws  in  the  country  wrhere  they  were  raised.  These 
steers  were  almost  as  wild  as  elk;  very  tall,  thin,  raw- 
boned,  high-headed,  with  enormous  horns  and  long 
tails,  and  as  there  \vas  great  danger  of  their  stamped 
ing  at  any  time,  I  put  all  of  them  in  a  herd  by  them 
selves  and  went  with  that  herd  myself.  I  worried 
about  these  steers  night  and  day,  and  talked  to  my 
men  incessantly  about  how  to  handle  them  and  what 
to  do  if  the  cattle  stampeded.  There  is  only  one  thing 

99 


100  COWBOY  LIFE  ON   THE  SIDETRACK. 

to  do  in  case  of  a  stampede  of  a  herd  of  wild  range 
steers,  and  that  is  for  every  cowboy  to  get  in  the  lead 
of  them  with  a  good  horse  and  keep  in  the  lead  with 
out  trying  to  stop  them,  but  gradually  turn  them 
and  get  them  to  running  in  a  circle,  or  "milling,"  as 
it  is  commonly  known  among  cowboys.  Cattle  on  the 
trail  never  stampede  but  one  way,  and  that  is  back 
the  way  they  come  from.  If  you  can  succeed  in  turn 
ing  them  in  some  other  direction,  you  can  gradually 
bring  them  to  a  stop.  These  long-legged  range  steers 
can  run  almost  as  fast  as  the  swiftest  horse. 

So  we  kept  our  best  and  swiftesf Worses  saddled 
all  night,  ready  to  spring  onto  in  case  the  herd  ev.er 
got  started.  We  were  driving  in  a  northerly  direction 
all  the  time,  and  every  night  took  the  herd  fully  a 
mile  north  of  the  mess  wagon  camp  before  we  bedded 
them  down.  I  had  fourteen  men  in  the  outfit,  half  of 
them  old-time  cowboys  and  the  other  half  would-be 
cowboys;  several  of  them  what  we  used  to  call  tender- 
feet. 

Amongst  the  green  thands  at  trailing  cattle  was 
the  nephew  of  my  eastern  partner,  a  college-bred  boy, 
with  blonde,  curly  hair  and  a  face  as  merry  as  a  girl's 
at  a  May  day  picnic.  The  boys  all  called  him  Curley. 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  IQI 

He  was  as  lovable  a  lad  as  I  ever  met,  but  positively 
refused  to  take  this  enormous  herd  of  old  outlaw, 
long-horned  steers  as  a  serious  proposition. 

We  had  always  four  men  on  night  herd  at  a  time, 
each  gang  standing  night  guard  three  hours,  when 
they  were  relieved  by  another  four  men.  The  first 
gang  was  8  to  11  o'clock  in  the  evening;  the  next  11 
till  2  and  the  last  guard  stood  from  2  till  daylight,  and 
then  started  the  herd  traveling  north  again.  I  kept 
two  old  cow  hands  and  two  green  ones  on  each  guard, 
and  had  been  nine  days  on  the  trail;  had  traveled 
about  a  hundred  miles  without  any  mishap.  We  had 
bright  .moonlight  nights.  The  grass  was  fine,  being 
about  the  first  of  June,  and  I  was  beginning  to  feel  a 
little  easier,  when  one  night  we  were  camped  on  a 
high  rolling  prairie  near  the  Wyoming  line. 

Curley  and  three  other  men  had  just  went  on 
guard  at  2  o'clock  in  the  morning.  The  moon  was  shin 
ing  bright  as  day.  Everything  was  as  still  as  could 
be,  the  old  long-horned  outlaws  all  lying  down  sleep 
ing,  probably  dreaming  of  the  cactus-covered  hillsides 
in  their  old  home  in  Arizona.  Curley  was  on  the  north 
eide  of  the  herd  and  rolling  a  cigarette.  He  forgot 
my  oft-repeated  injunction  not  to  light  a  parlor  match 


102 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 


around  the  herd  in  the  night,  but  scratched  one  on 
his  saddle  horn.    When  that  match  popped,  there  was 
a  roar  like  an  earthquake  and  the  herd  was  gone  in 
the  wink  of  an  eyelid;  just  two  minutes  from  the  time 
Curley  scratched  his  match,  that  wild,  crazy  avalanche 
of  cattle  was  running  over  that  camp  outfit,  two  and 
three  deep.    But  at  that  first  roar,  I  was  out  of  my 
blankets,  running  for  my  boss  and  hollering,  •'Come 
on,  boys!"  with  a  rising  inflection  on  "boys."    The  old 
hands   knew   What   was  coming  and   were   on   their 
bosses  soon  as  I  was,  but  the  tenderfeet  stampeded 
their  own  bosses  trying  to  get  onto  them,  and  their 
bosses  all  got  away  except  two,  and  when  their  riders 
finally  got  on  them,  they  took  across  the  hills  as  fast 
as  they  could  go  out  the  way  of  that  horde  of  on 
coming  wild-eyed  demons.     The  men  who  lost  their 
bosses  crawled  under  the  front  end  of  the  big  heavy 
roundup  wagon,  and  for  a  wonder  the  herd  didn't  over 
turn  the  wagon,  although  lots  of  them  broke  their 
horns  on  it  and  some  broke  their  legs.    When  I  lit  in 
the  saddle,  and  looked  around,  five  of  my  cowboys  was 
lined  up  side  of  me,  their  bosses  jumping  and  snort 
ing,  for  them  old  cow  bosses  scented  the  danger  and  I 
only  had  time  to  say,  "Keep  cool;  hold  your  bosses' 


The  Stampede 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  105 

heads  high,  boys,  and  keep  two  hundred  yards  ahead 
of  the  cattle  for  at  least  five  miles.  If  your  hoss  gives 
out  try  to  get  off  to  one  side,"  and  then  that  earth 
quake  (as  one  of  the  tenderfeet  called  it  when  he  first 
woke  up)  was  at  our  heels,  and  we  were  riding  for  our 
own  lives  as  well  as  to  stop  the  cattle,  because  if  a 
hoss  stumbled  or  stepped  in  a  badger  hoile  there 
wouldn't  be  even  a  semblance  of  his  rider  left  after 
those  thousands  of  hoofs  had  got  through  pounding 
him.  I  was  riding  a  Blackhawk  Morgan  hoss  with 
wonderful  speed  and  endurance  and  very  sure  footed, 
which  was  the  main  thing,  and  I  allowed  the  herd  to 
get  up  in  a  hundred  yards  of  me,  and  seeing  the  coun 
try  was  comparatively  smooth  ahead  of  me,  I  turned 
in  my  saddle  and  looked  back  at  the  cattle. 

I  had  been  in  stampedes  before,  but  nothing  like 
this.  The  cattle  were  runningtheir  best,  -all  the  crip 
ples  and  drags  in  the  lead,  their  sore  feet  forgotten. 
Every  steer  had  his  long  tail  in  the  air,  and  those  4,000 
waving  tails  made  me  think  of  a  sudden  whirlwind  in 
a  forest  of  young  timber.  Once  in  a  while  I  could  see 
a  little  ripple  in  the  sea  of  shining  backs,  and  I  knew 
a  steer  had  stumbled  and  gone  down  and  his  fellows 
had  tramped  him  into  mincemeat  as  they  went  over 


106  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

him.  They  were  constantly  breaking  one  another's 
big  horns  as  they  clashed  and  crowded  together,  and 
1  could  hear  their  horns  striking  and  breaking  above 
the  roar  of  the  thou sands  of  hoofs  on  the  hard  ground. 

As  my  eyes  moved  over  the  herd  and  to  one  side, 
I  caught  sight  of  a  rider  on  a  grey  hoss,  using  whip 
and  spur,  trying  to  get  ahead  of  the  cattle,  and  I 
knew  at  a  glance  it  was  Ourley,  as  none  of  the  other 
boys  had  a  grey  hoss  that  night.  I  could  see  he  was 
slowly  forging  ahead  and  getting  nearer  "the  lead  of 
the  cattle  all  the  time. 

We  had  gone  about  ten  or  twelve  nuiiles  and  had 
left  the  smooth,  rolling  prairie  behind  us  and  were 
thundering  down  the  divide  on  to  the  broken  country 
along  Crow  Creek.  Now,  cattle  on  a  stampede  all  fol 
low  the  leaders,  and  after  I  and  my  half  dozen  cow 
boys  had  ridden  in  the  lead  of  that  herd  for  twelve  or 
fifteen  miles,  gradually  letting  the  cattle  get  close  to 
us,  but  none  by  us,  why  we  were  the  leaders,  and  when 
we  began  to  strike  tn~at  rough  ground,  my  cowboys 
gradually  veered  to  the  left,  so  as  to  lead  the  herd 
away  from  the  creek  and  onto  the  divide  again.  But 
Curley  was  on  the  ileft  side  of  the  herd.  None  of  the 
other  boys  had  noticed  him,  and  when  the  herd  began 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  107 

to  swerve  to  the  left,  it  put  him  on  the  inside  of  a 
quarter  moon  of  rushing,  roaring  cattle.  I  hollered 
and  screamed  to  (my  men,  but  in  that  awful  roar  could 
hardly  hear  my  own  voice,  let  alone  make  my  men 
hear  me,  and  just  then  we  Avent  down  into  a  steep 
gulch  and  up  the  other  side.  I  saw  the  hind  end  of 
the  herd  sweep  across  from  their  course  of  the 
quarter  circle  towards  the  leaders,  saw  the  grey  hoss 
and  Curley  go  over  the  bank  of  the  gulch  out  of  sight 
amidst  hordes  of  struggling  animals.  But  as  I  looked 
back  at  the  cattle  swarming  up  the  other  bank  I 
looked  in  vain  for  that  grey  hoss  and  his  curly-haired 
rider.  Sick  at  heart,  I  thought  of  what  was  lying  in 
the  bottom  of  that  gulch  in  place  of  the  sunny-haired 
boy  my  partner  had  sent  out  to  me,  and  I  wished  that 
eighty  thousand  dollars  worth  of  hides,  horns  and 
hoofs  that  was  still  thundering  on  behind  was  back 
in  the  cactus  forests  of  Arizona, 

As  the  herd  swung  out  on  the  divide  they  split  in 
two,  part  of  them  turning  to  the  left,  making  a  circle 
of  about  two  miles,  myself  and  two  cowboys  heading 
this  part  of  the  herd  and  keeping  them  running  in  a 
smaller  circle  all  the  time  till  they  stopped.  The  other 
part  of  the  hertf  kept  on  for  about  five  miles  further, 


108  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

then  they  split  in  two,  and  the  cowboys  divided  and 
finally  got  both  bunches  stopped;  not,  however,  till  one 
bunch  had  gone  about  ten  miles  beyond  where  I  had 
got  the  first  herd  quieted. 

It  was  now  broad  daylight,  and  I  started  back  to 
the  gulch  where  poor^Curley  had  disappeared.  When 
I  came  in  sight  of  the  gulch,  I  saw  his  dead  boss, 
trampled  into  an  unrecognizable  mass,  lying  in  the 
bottom  of  the  gulch,  but  could  see  nothifng  of  Curley. 
While  gazing  up  and  down  the  gulch  which  was  over 
hung  with  rocks  in  places,  I  heard  someone  whistling 
a  tune,  and  looking  in  that  direction,  saw  Curley  with 
his  back  to  me,  percKed  on  a  rock  whistling  as  merry 
as  a  bird. 

He  told  me  that  as  his  boss  tumbled  over  the 

• 
rocky  bank,  he  fell  off  into  a  crevice,  and  crawling 

back  under  the  rocks,  he  watched  the  procession  go 
over  him. 

We  were  three  days  getting  the  cattle  back  to 
where  they  had  started  and  two  hundred  of  them  were 
dead  or  had  to  be  shot,  and  hundreds  had  their  horns 
broken  off  and  hanging  by  slivers.  It  had  cost  in  dead 
cattle  and  damage  to  the  living  at  leas!  .ftflJOOO.  But 
I  was  so  glad  to  get  that  curly-beaded  scamp  back 
alive  and  unhurt  I  never  said  a  word  to  bim. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


CATCHING  A  MAVERICK. 

One  day  while  waiting  for  a  gravel  train  going 
west,  we  all  got  to  talking  about  catching  mavericks. 
Eatumup  Jake  said  he'd  always  been  too  honest  to  go 
out  on  the  range  and  hunt  mavericks;  Dillbery  ike 
said  he  was  too,  but  he  wasn't  so  durned  honest  as 
to  let  a  maverick  chase  him' out  oTTitS  own  corral, 
and  they  asked  me  wrhat  I  thought  about  branding 
mavericks.  I  told  them  that  I  thought  it  was  a  bad 
practice  to  hunt  mavericks  all  the  time,  but  whenever 
a  maverick  came  around  hunting  mie  up,  I  generally 
built  a  fire  and  put  a  branding  iron  in  to  heat.  But 
I  toild  them  I  would  always  remember  one  maverick  I 
had  an  adventure  with,  and  after  they  had  all  prom 
ised  me  not  to  ever  tell  the  story  to  any  one,  I  told 
them  the  following: 

One  hot  day  in  the  spring  of  '84  I  sfarted  across 
the  hills  from  my  ranch  fo  town,  fifteen"  miles  awray. 
I  generally  had  a  good  rtiata  on  my  saddle,  but  this 

109 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

day,  for  some  reason,  I  didn't  take  anything  but  a 
piece  of  rope  fifteen  feet  long.  I  didn't  expect  to  meet 
any  mavericks,  as  it  was  just  after  the  spring  round 
up  and  there  wasn't  a  chance  in  a  hundred  of  seeing 
one.  My  way  was  across  a  high,  broken  country, 
without  a  house  or  a  ranch  the  entire  distance.  There 
was  bunches  of  cattle  and  horses  everywhere  eating 
the  luxuriant  grass,  drinking  out  of  the  clear  running 
streams  of  mountain  water  or  lying  down  too  full  to 
cat  or  drink  any  more.  I  was  riding  one  of  my  best 
hosses,  as  everybody  did  when  they  went  to  town;  had 
my  high-heeled  boots  blacked  till  you  could  see  your 
face  in  them;  was  wearing  a  brand-new  |12  Stetson 
hat  that  was  made  to  order;  had  on  a  pair  of  new  Cal 
ifornia  pants — they  were  sort  of  a  lavender  color  with 
checks  an  inch  square,  and  I  was  more  than  proud  of 
them.  I  had  on  a  white  silk  shirt  and  a  blue  silk 
handkerchief  round  my  neck,  a  red  silk  vest  with 
black  polka  dots  on  it.  but  didn't  have  any  coat  to 
match  this  brilliant  costume,  so  was  in  my  shirt 
sleeves. 

I  rode  along,  setting  kind  of  side  ways,  my  hat 
cocked  over  my  ear,  a-looking  down  at  myself  from 
time  to  time,  and  I  was  about  the  most  self-satisfied 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  m 

cowpuncher  ever  was,  didn't  envy  a  saloon-keeper  in 
the  territory,  and  saloon-beepers  (had  as  much  influ 
ence  in  Wyoming  them  days  as  a  sheepman  does  now, 
and  that 's  saying  all  you  can  say,  when  it 's  known 
that  the  sheepmen  to-day  in  Wyoming  fill  almost 
every  office,  elective  and  appointive. 

Well  I  had  got  about  half  way  to  town  and  was  a- 
studying  'bout  a  girl  I  bid  goodbye  to  in  the  East  fif 
teen  years  before,  and  sort  a-wishing  she  could  see  me 
now,  when  all  of  a  sudden  I  looked  up  and  right 
there,  not  fifty  feet  away,  was  a  big,  fat,  ~black  bull 
maverick.  He  was  about  a  year  and  a  half  old  and 
would  weigh  800  pounds.  He  was  wild  as  an  elk  and 
had  given  a  loud  snuff  on  seeing  me,  which  had  called 
my  attention  to  him.  I  immediately  commenced  mak 
ing  that  short  piece  of  rope  into  a  lasso.  There  wasn't 
much  more  than  enough  for  the  loop,  But!  knew  old 
Bill,  the  boss  I  was  riding,  could  catch  him  on  any 
kind  of  ground,  so  throwed  the  spurs  in  and  went  sail 
ing  over  the  breaks  and  coolies  after  that  wild  bull 
maverick.  I  soon  caught  up  with  him,  but  found  it 
amost  impossible  to  throw  the  loop  over  his  head 
with  such  a  short  rope,  as  he  dodged  to  one  side  or 
the  other  every  time  I  got  in  reach.  However,  I 

8- 


-Q2  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

finally  got  it  over  his  horns  just  as  he  went  over  a 
bank,  but  before  L  could  take  any  Mallys,  he  jerked 
the  rope  out  of  my  hands  and  was  gone  with  it. 

Now  I  had  got  to  pick  up  the  rope,  and  as  it  only 
dragged  five  or  six  feet  behind  him,  I  would  have  to 
ride  by  him  and  grab  the  rope  near  his  head  as  I  went 
by:  but  he  was  still  on  the  dodge,  and  I  made  several 
passes  at  it  and  missed.  The  bull  was  getting  mad 
by  this  time,  and  lowering  his  head  and  elevating  his 
tail  he  soon  had  me  on  the  dodge.  Whenever  I  wasn't 
chasing  the  bull,  he  was  cha'sing  me.  Thus  we  had  it 
up  one  gulch  and  down  another.  Many  times  I 
grabbed  the  rope  only  to  have  it  jerked  out  of  my 
fingers,  but  finally  got  a  wrap  around  my  saddle  horn 
and  a  knot  tied.  It  never  had  occurred  to  me  I  could 
n't  throw  him  with  that  short  rope  till  I  was  tied  hard 
and  fast  to  him  and  riding  down  the  gulch  at  break 
neck  speed  with  that  blaclsT  bull  a  close  second. 

We  had  been  chasing  each  other  now  for  over  an 
hour  and  my  hoss  was  getting  tired,  but  Mr.  Bull 
seemed  to  be  fresher  than  ever.  I  had  lost  my  new 
Stetson  hat  early  in  the  game,  and,  as  we  had  soused 
through  a  good  many  alkali  mud-holes,  I  was  spal- 

*Wrapping  rope  arout.d  the  saddle  horn. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK. 

tered  from  head  to  foot  with  mud.  My  white  silk 
shirt  and  lavender-colored  pants  were  a  total  wreck. 
But  something  had  got  to  be  done,  and  watching  the 
bull  till  he  was  veering  a  little  to  the  left  of  my  hoss 
I  made  a  quick  turn  to  the  right,  and  stopping  right 
quick,  turned  Mr.  Bull  over  on  his  back.  Before  he 
could  get  up  I  was  off  and  on  top  of  him,  had  his  tail 
between  his  hind  legs,  my  knees  in  his  flank,  and,  as 
every  cowpuncher  knows,  I  could  hold  him  down. 
My  hoss  was  pulling  on  the  rope  same  as  any  well- 
trained  cow  hoss  would,  keeping  the  bull's  head 
stretched  out,  and  there  wasn't  the  least  possible 
show  of  him  getting  up;  but  as  I  didn't  have  any  short 
foot  ropes  to  tie  his  feet  with,  I  just  had  to  set  in  his 
flank  and  keep  tight  hold  of  his  tail.  Billy,  my  hoss, 
had  got  hot  and  excited  during  the  race  and  kept 
surging  on  the  rope  more  than  was  necessary.  I  kept 
saying,  "Whoa,  Bill,"  but  directly  he  give  an  extra 
hard  pull,  the  rope  broke  right  at  the  bull's  head, 
and  despite  my  nice  tailk,  Billy  turned  his  back  to  me 
and  started  across  the  hills  for  home.  In  vain  I  hol 
lered,  "Whoa,  Bill;  come,  Billy,"  he  never  looked 
around  but  once,  and  that  was  just  as  he  disappeared 
over  the  hill.  He  sort  a-looked  back  for  a  moment, 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

as  much  as  to  say,  "Well  you  wanted  that  darn  little 
black  bull  so  bad,  now  you  got  him  stay  with  him/' 
and  that,  's  what  I  had  to  do.  He  was  twice  as  hard 
to  hold  now  without  any  rope  on  his  head,  but  I  knew 
if  he  ever  got  up,  he  would  gore  me  to  death,  as  there 
wasn't  a  tree  or  rock  to  get  behind. 

It  was  about  noon.  The  hot  sun  was  pouring 
down  on  my  bare  head  and  I  was  choking  with  thirst. 
No  one  ever  traveled  that  way  but  me. "  Miles  away 
to  any  habitation,  there  I  would  have  to  stay  in  that 
stooping  position,  holding  on  to  that  little  black  bull's 
tail.  I  was  young  and  strong,  but  my  back  began  to 
ache,  my  hand  would  cramp  clasping  that  bull's  tail 
so  tightly,  but  still  T  held  on  somehow,  for  I  knew 
certain  death  awaited  me  if  I  let  go.  A  bunch  of 
cattle  came  along  and  circled  around  me  with  wide- 
eyed  astonishment,  then  trotted  off;  a  couple  of  an 
telope  came  running  over  the  hill,  and  catching  sight 
of  me  in  that  ridiculous  position,  their  curiosity  over 
came  their  timidity  and  they  kept  getting  nearer  and 
nearer,  till  only  a  few  rods  away,  the  old  buck  ante 
lope  stopped  and  snuffed  very  loudly  and  stamped  with 
his  fore  feet,  but,  not  being  able  to  get  any  response 
out  of  the  black  bull  and  me,  finally  left.  Then  a 


Catching  a  tifdverick. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

silly  jackrabbit  came  hopping  up  on  three  legs,  and 
after  standing  up  several  times  on  his  hind  legs  as 
high  as  possible  and  pulling  his  whiskers  some,  he 
shook  his  big  ears  as  much  as  to  say,  "It 's  beyond 
me,"  and  he,  too,  left. 

Just  then  the  bull  took  a  new  fit  of  struggling 
and  I  heard  the  loud  buzz  of  a  rattlesnake  behind  me. 
I  almost  dropped  my  holt  on  the  bull's  tail  then,  but 
I  had  acquired  the  habit  of  holding  on  to  it  by  this 
time,  so  glanced  over  my  shoulder  to  see  how  far  the 
snake  was  from  me.  I  discovered  he  was  only  about 
ten  feet  behind  me,  coiled  up  and  mad  about  some 
thing.  He  was  about  four  and  a  half  feet  long  and  big 
around  as  <my  wrist,  and  didn't  seem  to  have  any 
notion  of  going  around,  but  just  'laid  there  colled  up, 
and  every  time  the  bull  or  me  moved,  would  begin  to 
rattle  and  draw  his  head  back  and  forth,  run  out  his 
tongue  and  act  disagreeable.  Several  times  he  started 
to  uncoil  and  crawl  in  my  direction,  but  I  stirred  up 
the  bull  to  floundening  around  and  bluffed  the  snake 
out  of  coming  any  closer.  Still  he  seemed  to  like  our 
company,  and  finaly  went  to  sleep;  but  every  time  I 
and  the  bull  got  to  threshing  around,  he  would  drow 
sily  sound  his  rattle,  as  much  as  to  say,  "I  am  still 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 


here;  don't  crowd  me  any."  It  was  now  about  two 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  I  felt  a  kind  of  a  goneness 
in  my  stomach,  but  my  thirst  was  something  awful, 
and  in  my  mind's  eye  I  could  see  the  boys  in  town 
setting  in  the  card-room  of  the  saloon  around  the 
poker  tables  behind  stacks  of  red,  white  and  blue 
chips,  drinking  Scotch  highballs,  while  I  was  out  on 
that  high  mesa  dying  of  thirst  and  holding  down  a 
little  black  bull  maverick  with  nothing  for  company 
but  that  old  fat  rattlesnake  who  insisted  on  staying 
there  to  see  how  the  bull  and  I  come  out. 

I  hoped  against  hope  that  when  old  Billy  arrived 
at  the  ranch  some  one  would  start  back  with  him  to 
hunt  me  up,  but  I  remembered  that  most  everybody 
at  the  ranch  had  gone  up  in  the  mountains  trout  fish 
ing  and  woudn't  be  back  till  night,  and  then  I  won 
dered  which  would  live  the  longest,  me  or  the  bull, 
and  I  thought  about  slipping  away  from  him  while 
he  was  quiet;  but  the  moment  I  would  loosen  up  on 
his  tail  he  would  commence  threshing  around  trying 
to  get  up,  still  I  kept  fooling  with  him.  I  'd  loosen  up 
on  his  tail,  and  then  when  he  tried  to  get  up,  throw 
him  back;  so  pretty  soon  he  didn't  pay  any  attention 
when  I  loosened  up,  and  I  thought  I  would  try  a  sneak. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

However,  in  order  to  make  him  think  I  still  had  hold 
of  hds  tail,  I  tied  the  end  of  it  into  a  hard  knot. 

I  looked  around  for  his  snakeship,  as  I  had  got  to 
sneak  back  towards  him,  but  he  was  sound  asleep, 
and  as  the  bull  was  pretty  quiet,  I  sized  up  the  coun 
try  back  of  me  and  spied  a  gulch  with  steep  broken 
banks  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  yards  away,  and 
made  up  my  mind  that  that  was  the  place  to  get  to. 
So  slipping  by  the  snake  I  made  the  star  run  of  my 
life  for  that  gulch. 

I  had  run  about  fifty  feet  when  that  bull  first 
realized  some  of  his  company  was  missing,  and  jump 
ing  to  his  feet  looked  around  and  caught  sight  of  me, 
and  giving  a  snuff  that  I  can  hear  in  nay  dreams  to 
this  day,  he  was  after  me.  Talk  about  running.  I 
remember  a  ja^krabbit 'jumped  up  in  front  of  me,  but 
I  hollered  to  him  to  get  out  of  the  way.  The  bull 
caught  up  before  I  quite  got  to  the  gulch,  but  hesi 
tated  for  a  moment  where  to  put  his  horns,  and  sort 
a-throwed  his  head  up  and  down  for  a  time  or  two, 
like  he  was  practicing — kind  a-getting  a  swing  like 
throwing  a  hammer.  When  he  got  Ms  heck  to  work 
ing  good,  biff!  he  took  me  and  I  went  sailing  through 
the  air,  but  when  I  come  down  it  was  on  the  bank  of 


120  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

the  gulch,  and  before  he  could  pick  me  up  again  I 
was  over  and  under  that  bank.  It  was  about  fifteen 
feet  to  the  bottom  and  straight  up  and  down,  but 
there  was  a  little  shelf  of  hard  dirt  on  the  side,  and 
I  caught  on  there  and  was  safe.  He  had' gone  clear 
over  me  into  the  gulch,  but  was  up  and  bawling  and 
jawing  around  in  a  minute.  However,  he  couldn't  get 
up  to  me.  so  looked  around,  found  a  trail  leading  out 
of  the  gulch,  and  went  up  on  top,  then  come  around 
and  looked  down  at  me.  He  was  mad  clear  through; 
went  and  hunted  up  the  old  rattlesnake,  and  after 
pawing  and  bellowing  around  him,  charged  him  and 
got  bit  on  the  nose.  Then  he  saw  my  Stetson  hat, 
and  giving  a  roar,  went  after  it,  and  putting  his  horn 
through  it,  went  off  across  the  hills  mad  clear 
through,  full  of  snake  poison,  with  my  Stetson  hat  on 
one  horn,  and  that  was  the  last  I  saw  of  the  little 
black  bull. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 


STEALING  CRAZY  HEAD'S  WAR  PONIES. 

We  all  got  to  talking  about  loolung  over  your 
shoulder,  and  the  boys  asked  me  if  I  had  ever  had  to 
look  over  my  shoulder,  and  I  related  to  thean  the  fol 
lowing  incident  in  my  career  on  the  plains: 

In  the  year  1880-81  the  first  cattle  herds  were 
driven  to  northern  Wyoming  and  turned  loose  along 
Tongue  River,  Powder  River  and  the  Little  Horn,  and 
while  the  Injuns  in  southern  Montana  at  that  time 
were  not  very  hostile,  yet  they  kept  stealing  our 
hosses  and  butchering  the  cattlemen's  cattle  and  com 
mitting  all  kinds  of  petty  crimes,  and  once  in  a  while 
when  they  found  a  white  man  riding  aloneln  the  hills 
didn't  scruple  to  murder  him.  But  stealing  hosses 
was  their  long  suit.  Now,  I  only  had  four  hosses  at 
that  time,  and  was  working  out  by  the  month  for  a 
cow  outfit  at  |50  a  month  and  board.  I  thought 
everything  of  these  four  hosses,  as  they  was  the  sum 
total  of  my  possessions  except  about  f 500  I  had  due 

121 


122  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

me  in  wages.  And  when  these  hosses  was  missing 
one  day  and  a  hunter  reported  seeing  a  band  of  Injuns 
prowling  around,  I  was  pretty  well  worked  up.  A 
good  many  of  the  settlers  in  northern  Wyoming  at  that 
time  had  had  their  hosses  stolen  by  the  Injuns,  but 
when  they  found  them  in  the  Injuns'  possession  were 
unable  to  get  them,  as  the  Injuns  refused  to  give  them 
up  and  wrould  drive  the  white  men  out  of  their  camp.  I 
had  always  made  a  loud  talk  when  these  men  related 
their  experiences,  that  if  ever  any  Injuns  stole  my 
hosses  and  I  found  them  in  their  possession  I  'd  take 
them  hosses  and  no  Injun  would  drive  me  a  step  in 
any  direction.  So  when  a  freighter  reported  seeing 
some  Injuns  on  the  Little  Horn  River,  going  north 
with  my  hosses,  the  cowboys  all  said  now  was  the 
time  for  me  to  make  good  all  my  loud  talk  about  tak 
ing  my  hosses  away  from  the  Injuns  if  they  stole 
them. 

I  had  considerable  trouble  to  get  anyone  to  go  with 
me,  but  finally  persuaded  a  boy  by  the  name  of  King, 
who  was  about  17  years  old  at  the  time,  and  getting 
three  hosses  from  the  outfit  I  worked  for,  which  was 
the  PK  cattle  outfit,  we  packed  one  of  the  hosses  with 
bed  and  grub,  and  riding  the  other  two  we  struck  out 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  123 

north  down  the  Little  Horn  River.  After  traveling 
along  the  river  for  several  days  we  crosseeTand  went 
over  on  the  Big  Horn  River,  and  keeping  up  this  river 
to  the  T>ig  Horn  Mountains,  came  across  about  two 
hundred  Injuns  camped  at  the  base  of  the  mountains. 
As  soon  as  we  got  in  sight  of  their  cayuses  we  saw 
two  of  my  bosses  running  with  theirs.  When  we  rode 
into  their  camp  they  appeared  friendly  enough  till 
they  found  out  we  wanted  these  two  bosses.  I  could 
talk  the  Injun  language,  and  after  making  one  of  the 
petty  chiefs  of  their  ftand  a  few  little  presents,  King 
and  I  went  out  to  catch  our  two  bosses,  but  they  had 
been  running  with  the  Injuns'  cayuses  so  long  we 
couldn't  get  near  them.  Finally  we  tried  to  drive 
them  away  from  the  Injuns'  cayuses,  but  about  twen 
ty  Injuns  had  come  up  to  us  and  told  us  to  let  the 
bosses  alone  and  go  away.  They  had  their  guns,  and 
While  they  didn't  point  their  guns  at  me,  they  kept 
sticking  them  against  King's  breast  and  threatening 
to  shoot  if  he  didn't  go  at  once.  I  now  offered  to  pay 
them  if  they  would  catch  the  two  bosses.  Even7  In 
jun  wanted  from  four  to  twenty  dollars  apiece.  As 
there  were  about  twenty  Injuns  it  amounted  to  about 
|300.  The  Injuns  rounded  up  all  their  cayuses,  and 


124  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

getting  them  in  a  safe  corral,  caught  my  Iwo  bosses. 
1  now  instructed  King  to  take  the  saddle  off  the 
boss  he  was  riding  and  tie  the  boss  to  the  pack-boss, 
and  I  also  done  this  w.ith  the  one  I  was  riding.  We 
then  turned  them  loose  and  the  three  animals  imme 
diately  started  south  towards  Wyoming.  I  then  told 
King  to  saddle  one  of  the  bosses  that  the  Injuns  bad 
caught  for  us,  but  pay  no  attention  to  the  Injun  who 
was  holding  it.  I  saddled  the  other  animal;  two  In 
juns  each  bad  a  rope  on  the  boss's  neck.  When  we  got 
them  saddled  and  bridled,  I  told  King  to  get  on  his, 
and  I  got  on  mine.  The  Injuns  were  standing  all 
around  us  as  well  as  the  squaws  and  papooses,  but 
they  had  all  laid  down  their  guns.  I  pulled  my  Win 
chester  out  of  the  saddle  scabbard  and  throwing  a 
shell  in  the  barrel,  I  told  King  to  pull  his  sixshooter 
and  cut  the  Injun's  rope  that  was  on  bis  boss's  neck. 
He  said:  "The  Injuns  will  shoot  me  if  I  cTo."  I  said: 
UI  will  shoot  you  right  now  if  you  don't."  Although 
he  was  very  much  excited,  he  managed  to  pull  his 
knife  out  of  his  belt  and  cut  the  Injun's  rope,  and  im 
mediately  started  off  after  the  pack-boss  and  saddle 
bosses  on  a  dead  run.  The  Injuns  all  set  up  a  howl, 
and  the  squaws  began  bringing  the  guns  out  of  the 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  125 

teepees.  But  I  kept  throwing  my  Winchester  down 
on  first  one  and  then  another.  The  Injuns  kept  up  an 
awful  din  hollering  to  one  another,  all  the  squaws 
yelling  to  kill  the  masacheta  (white  man).  But  I 
could  hear  the  chiefs  voice  above  them  all,  telling 
them  not  to  shoot  me.  The  two  Injuns  holding  the 
hoss  having  dropped  their  ropes,  I  suddenly  threw 
the.  ropes  off  my  boss's  neck  and  reaching  down  grab 
bed  a  papoose,  five  or  six  years  old,  and  throwing  it 
up  in  the  saddle  with  me,  galloped  away.  I  knew  they 
wouldn't  shoot  at  me' as  long  as  I  held  to  that  pa 
poose.  But  it  was  like  holding  on  to  a  full-grown 
wildcat.  I  was  carrying  my  Winchester  in  one  hand, 
guiding  my  hoss  with  the  same  hand  and  trying  to 
hold  on  to  that  little  biting,  scratching,  hair -pu Ming, 
shrieking  papoose  with  the  other.  My  hoss  was 
bounding  over  rocks  and  sage  brush.  But  he  was  a 
magnificent  animal  and  in  less  time  than  it  takes  to 
tell  I  was  out  of  gunshot,  and  then  I  dropped  that 
Shrieking  little  Injun  devil  on  a  sage  bush  and  gal 
loped  off  in  the  gathering  darkness. 

I  soon  caught  up  with  King.  We  traveled  all 
night  and  the  next  day.  Putting  him  on  the  trail  to 
Wyoming  with  all  the  hosses  but  the  one  I  was  rid- 


126  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

ing,  I  turned  north  again  to  find  tlie  other  two  hosses. 
That  day  I  met  a  Piegan  Injun  that  I  was  acquainted 
with,  and  he  told  me  old  Crazy  Head's  band  was 
camped  on  the  Yellowstone  River,  and  that  they  had 
my  other  two  hosses  and  tried  to  sell  them  to  him. 

I  rode  into  Fort  Ouster  and  told  my  story  to  Jim 
Dunleavy,  the  post  scout  and  interpreter,  and  wanted 
him  to  introduce  me  to  the  post  commancTer  and  get 
me  a  permit  to  be  on  the  reservation.  But  the  post 
commander  refused  to  see  me  and  sent  word  for  me 
to  get  off  the  reservation,  or  he  would  put  me  in  the 
guard  house.  But  I  struck  out  through  the  hills 
north,  and  that  afternoon  came  in  sight  of  Crazy 
Head's  camp.  I  found  an  Injun  boy  herding  a  large 
bunch  of  cayuses  about  a  mile  from  camp,  with  my 
two  hosses  in  the  bunch.  I  rode  into  the  herd  and  had 
my  hosses  roped  and  tied  together  before  the  Injun 
had  recovered  from  his  surprise,  and  started  back 
south. 

But  now  a  neiv  idea  took  possession  of  me.  Why 
not  steal  some  Indian  cayuses  and  get  even?  There 
was  a  stage  line  running  through  the  reservation 
them  days,  and  I  knew  the  stock  tender  at  the  stage 
ranch,  fifteen  miles  from  Fort  Custer,  at  the  Fort 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  127 

Cus-ter  battle-ground.  So  waiting  till  dark  I  went 
there,  and  getting  something  to  eat  and  leaving  the 
two  bosses,  I  started  back  to  Crazy  Head's  camp.  It 
was  a  bright,  moonlight  night  and  I  found  fhe  Injuns1 
cayuses  grazing  in  the  same  place.  Looking  around 
cautiously  I  discovered  two  fine-looking,  coal  black 
cayuses  grazing  by  themselves  about  two  hundred 
yards  from  the  main  bundh.  Slipping  up  close  to 
them  I  threw  my  rawhide  rope  over  one  of  them,  and, 
as  he  was  perfecty  gentle,  started  to  lead  him  to  a 
little  patch  of  timber,  intending  to  hobble  him  and 
come  back  and  get  his  mate.  But  as  soon  as  I  started 
to  lead  him  off,  bis  mate  followed  him,  so  I  just  kept 
going  till  I  got  to  the  stage  station,  twenty  miles 
from  there,  about  3  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Getting 
a  bite  to  eat  from  the  old  stock  tender  and  showing 
him  the  two  cayuses  I  had  stole,  he  told  me  he  knew 
the  cayuses  and  that  they  were  old  Crazy  Head's  war 
ponies. 

I  had  been  in  the  saddle  now  for  twenty-four 
hours  without  any  rest,  but  dare  not  stop  a  moment, 
for  I  knew  the  Injuns  and  troops  both  would  be  after 
me  as  soon  as  Crazy  Head  missed  his  ponies.  So 
necking  the  two  to  my  other  two  'bosses  I  started  for 


128  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

Wyoming,  ninety  miles  away.  The  Little  Horn  River 
was  very  high,  swimming  a  hoss  from  bank  to  bank, 
and  the  stage  hadn't  been  able  to  get  through  for 
some  time.  The  recent  rains  made  the  ground  soft, 
and  I  knew  the  Injuns  would  have  no  trouble  track 
ing  me.  But  they  wouldn't  miss  the  ponies  till  6 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  so  I  would  (have  twenty  miles 
the  start  and  "certainly  three  hours  of  time.  But  there 
was  the  danger  of  meeting  other  Ii(funs  who  would 
know  Crazy  Head's  ponies,  and  I  might  meet  some 
scouting  soldiers  and  have  to  give  an  account  of  my 
self,  not  having  any  permit.  I  didn't  mind  swimming 
the  Little  Horn  River,  if  I  hadn't  the  bosses  to  drive, 
but  it 's  hard  work  for  a  hoss  to  swim  in  a  swift  cur 
rent  where  the  waves  out  about  the  middle  are  run 
ning  big  and  high,  as  they  do  in  mountain  streams,  a^d 
drive  some  loose  bosses.  But  I  made  the  bosses  all 
plunge  in  and  started  for  the  other  shore,  two  hun 
dred  yards  away.  They  all  swam  like  ducks  at  first 
crossing,  but  I  would  have  to  swim  the  river  seyen 
times  if  I  kept  the  valley,  and  knew  I  would  lose  time 
if  I  went  through  the  hills.  So  I  kepf  on  in  a  tireless 
lope,  mile  after  mile,  and  all  the  time  looking  back 
over  my  shoulder. 


"Looking  Over  My  Shoulder.' 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  131 

Now  I  knew  the  Injuns  couldn't  be  in  twenty 
miles  of  me,  but  nevertheless  I  kept  looking  over  my 
shoulder  to  make  sure,  arid  I  looked  ahead,  and  every 
moving  bush  along  the  stream  looked  like  a  soldier 
or  an  Injun,  and  every  jackrabbit  that  jumped  up 
side  the  road,  every  sage  hen  that  flew  out  the  grass 
and  startled  my  bosses  nearly  made  me  jump  out  of 
my  skin.  Everything  that  moved  in  the  distance 
looked  like  old  Crazy  Head  to  me.  Talk  about  looking 
over  your  shoulder,  boys;  why,  my  neck  got  in  the 
shape  of  a  corkscrew.  Then  I  came  to  another  cross 
ing  of  the  river.  I  never  stopped  to  look  at  the  high 
rolling  black  waters,  but  plunged  my  bosses  in  and 
struck  out  for  the  other  side.  I  again  made  it  in 
safety,  and  stopping  just  long  enough  to  tighten  my 
saddle  cinches,  took  another  look  over  my  shoulder 
and  hit  that  lope  again  and  made  up  my  mind  I 
wouldn't  be  caught.  But  supposing  1  was  caught, 
what  kind  of  a  story  could  I  tell?  And  so  I  tried  to 
figure  out  a  defense  for  being  found  with  them  two 
black  bosses.  I  couldn't  think  of  anything  or  any 
story  but  what  looked  fishy  and  showed  I  was  a  thief, 
and  it  seemed  as  if  every  one  else  would  know  it.  I 
remember  after  I  became  an  officer  of  the  law,  several 


132  COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

years  after  this  event  happened,  I  caught  a  poor  devil 
skinning  a  beef  one  day  that  didn't  belong  to  him,  and 
as  I  rode  up  on  him  and  told  him  to  turn  the  beef  over 
so  I  could  see  the  brand,  he  dropped  his  skinning  knife 
and  looking  up  at  me  with  guilt  and  terror  in  his  face, 
he  says,  "You  know  how  it  is  yourself.''  And  I  said, 
"Yes,  Bill,  I  know  how7  it  is.  I  was  a  thief  once,  but 
the  people  are  paying  me  now  to  uphold  the  law.  Be 
sides  I  stole  Injun  bosses  and  you  are  stealing  white 
men's  beef."  And  then  at  the  memory  of  my  ride  on 
the  Little  Horn  that  day  I  looked  over  my  shoulder 
again,  and  when  I  looked  back  for  Bill  he  was  gone, 
and  somehow  I  was  kind  of  glad,  for  I  had  a  fellow 
feeling  for  him. 

But  to  return  to  my  story.  When  I  had  swum 
the  Little  Horn  the  fourth  time  I  was  forty  miles  on 
my  journey,  and  while  the  iron  grey  Oregon  boss  I 
was  riding  seemed  as  fresh  as  ever,  the  black  Indian 
ponies  seemed  to  be  getting  tired.  When  I  struck  the 
next  ford  on  the  river  I  was  fifty  miles  on  the  way  and 
it  was  only  9  o'clock.  I  wras  feeling  pretty  good.  But 
this  time  when  we  got  out  about  the  middle  of  the 
river  where  the  waves  were  high  and  rolling,  one  of 
the  Injun  ponies  stopped  swimming  and  commenced 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  133 

to  float  down  stream  with  his  nose  in  the  water  and 
dragging  the  one  he  was  necked  to  with  Iiim.  I 
started  after  them  and  by  a  good  deal  of  urging  got 
miy  hoss  alongside,  and  throwing  my  rope  on  them 
finally  towed  them  ashore.  The  pony  laid  in  the  shal 
low'  water  at  the  shore  for  a  long  time,  and  I  thought 
he  was  dead,  but  he  finally  came  to  and  got  up.  But 
he  was  full  of  water  and  pretty  groggy. 

I  found  the  other  two,  and  getting  them  together 
again  started  on,  but  knew  I  would  have  to  take  to 
the  hills  now  when  I  came  to  the  river  again,  which 
I  did,  and  hadn't  rode  over  five  miles  in  the  hills  skirt 
ing  the  river  till,  coming  up  on  a  high  divide  and  look 
ing  down  in  the  valley  of  the  river,  I  saw  a  camp  of 
five  or  six  hundred  Injuns;  but  they  didn't  See  me, 
and  I  kept  on  till  I  came  to  Owl  Creek,  which  empties 
into  the  Little  Horn,  and  it  was  bank  full  of  cream- 
colored,  muddy  water.  The  banks  wrere  steep  and  I 
couldn't  guess  at  the  depth  of  the  water,  which  was 
of  the  consistency  of  gumbo  soup.  However,  I  drove 
the  hosses  into  it,  first  having  untied  them  from  one 
another,  as  the  buffalo  trail  going  down  into  it  was 
very  narrow.  As  each  hoss  plunged  in  he  went  com 
pletely  out  of  sight,  and  I  couldn't  guess  how  far  he 


134  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

went  under  water.  But  they  all  clambered  up  on  the 
other  bank,  and  I  see  I  had  got  to  follow  them,  so 
plunged  in.  As  my  hoss  jumped  off  that  high  bank, 
I  grabbed  my  nose  and  under  that  yellow  water  we 
went.  It  seemed  like  we  never  would  find  the  bot 
tom,  but  finally  did,  and  came  back  to  the  surface 
and  scrambled  up  the  bank.  My  fine  buckskin  shirt 
and  leggings  made  but  a  sorry  appearance.  My  six- 
shooter  and  holster  were  full  of  yellow  mud  the  same 
as  my  Winchester,  and  it  took  me  an  hour  to  clean 
my  guns  and  get  that  yellow  mud  off  my  hat  and 
clothes.  But  I  had  no  more  streams  to  cross,  except 
Tongue  River,  which  is  in  Wyoming,  and  I  crossed  it 
a  little  after  dark  and  got  to  my  own  ranch  at  9 
o'clock  that  evening,  having  ridden  the  same  hoss  one 
hundred  and  six  miles  since  3  o'clock  that  morning. 

That  grey  hoss  is  still  living  and  is  30  years  old 
now,  and  is  well  known  by  all  the  old-timers  in 
northern  Wyoming.  I  laid  down  and  slept  for  twenty 
hoars,  and  when  I  reported"  at  the  roundup  with  my 
four  bosses  and  the  two  Injun  ponies  besides,  I  got  a 
hearty  handshake  all  around.  The  boys  made  up  a  pot 
of  a  hundred  dollars  and  gave  it  to  me  for  the  Injun 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  -^35 

ponies,  and   then  played  a  game  of  freeze-out  to  see 
who  should  have  them. 

I've  never  had  the  least  inclination  to  look  over 
my  shoulder  since. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


THE  CATTLE  QUEEN'S  GHOST. 

AVhen  darkness  overshadows  a  lone  cow  ranch,  wild  and  drear, 
One's  nerves  they  get  a-trembling  in  a  way  that  seems  so  queer; 
AVhen  you  fed  the  spirits  round  you,  'tis  idle  then  to  boast 
You  don't  believe  those  stories  you  've  heard  about  the  ghosts. 

One  dark,  rainy  evening  while  we  were  waiting 
on  a  sidetrack  the  boys  insisted  I  should  tell  them 
some  adventure  of  mine.  So  after  considerable  urg 
ing  I  told  them  an  actual  experience  I  had,  that  has 
always  convinced  me  that  murdered  people's  ghosts 
come  back  and  haunt  the  place  they  were  murdered  in. 

Twenty  years  ago  Jerry  Wilson  was  known  as  the 
cattle  king  of  the  Platte  River.  His  cattle  roamed 
for  hundreds  of  miles  up  and  down  the  main  river  and 
all  its  tributaries,  and,  as  the  cowboys  used  to  say,  no 
one  man  could  count  them  even  if  they  was  strung 
out,  cause  he  couldn't  count  high  enough. 

Jerry  had  a  beautiful  wife  and  two  lovely  chil 
dren,  a  boy  and  a  girl,  and  for  years  he  and  his  family 

136 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETtiACK.  137 

had  no  settled  place  to  live,  but  went  around  amongst 
his  different  ranches,  staying  awhile  at  each^one,  the 
children  being  kept  in  school  in  Chicago,  except  in  the 
summer  time  when  they  came  West  to  stay  on  some 
cattle  ranch  with  their  parents.  Finally  Jerry  Wilson 
bought  a  new  ranch  up  in  the  south  part  of  South  Da 
kota,  on  Battle  Creek,  and  stocking  it  up  with  regis 
tered  cattle  and  fine  horses,  built  a  fine  house,  fur 
nished  it  very  expensively  and  settled  on  this  ranch 
for  their  home.  He  built  magnificent  barns  that  were 
the  talk  of  the  whole  country,  and  spent  a  small  for 
tune  in  building  up  and  beautifying  this  ranch.  But 
one  day  Jerry  was  riding  his  horse  after  a  cow  on  a 
hard  run.  The  horse  stepped  in  a  badger  hole  and  fell 
on  top  of  him,  crushing  in  his  ribs  and  otherwise  in 
juring  him  so  he  only  lived  long  enough  to  be  carried 
to  the  house  and  bid  his  wife  and  children  goodbye 
before  he  died. 

Mrs.  Wilson  mourned  for  Jerry  a  long  time,  but 
the  'care  of  her  two  children  and  the  increasing  cattle 
herds  occupied  her  mind  and  time  to  such  an  extent 
that  her  grief  had  settled  into  a  quiet  sadness,  when 
a  young  man  from  New  York  City,  who  had  been  dis 
carded  from  home  by  his  family  for  his  profligate  ex- 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

cesses,  came  to  Battle  Creek,  and  stopping  at  Mrs. 
Wilson's  ranch  was  (as  is  the  custom  at  all  cattle 
ranches  in  the  West)  made  welcome  to  stay  as  long  as 
he  wanted  to.  At  this  time  Jerry  Wilson  had  been  dea  1 
seven  years.    His  daughter,  who  was  the  oldest  of  the 
two  children,  had  married  a  prominent  lawyer  of  Chi 
cago.     The  son  was  in  school  in  the  same  city,  and 
Mrs.   Wilson   made   her   home   at   the   Battle   Creek 
ranch.     She  had  successfully  carried  on  all  her  cattle 
enterprises  and  was  known  all  over  the  West  as  the 
Cattle  Queen.     She  was  about  40  years  old  at  this 
time,  still  a  beautiful  woman  and  had  received  many 
offers  of  marriage,  but  had  rejected  them  all  till  this 
graceless  and  unprincipled  scoundrel  from  New  York, 
whose  name  was  Clayton  Allen,  came  to  the  ranch. 
Mrs.  Wilson  had  arrived  at  the  age  where  a  great 
many  women  begin  to  hanker  for  a  young  man's  soci 
ety  and  attention,  and  was  soon  violently  in  love  with 
Clayton  Allen;  and  he,  seeing  a  chance  to  get  hold  of 
large  sums  of  money  to  gamble  and  go  on  sprees  with, 
and  knowing  he  could  never  hope  to  get  any  more  from 
his  family,  laid  siege  to  the  Cattle  Queen's  heart  and 
herds  with  all  the  wiles  he  was  capable  of. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK 


To  make  the  story  short,  Mrs.  Wilson  married  this 
worse  than  scamp  arid  learned  too  late  to  regret  her 
mistake.  He  persuaded  her  first  to  sell  all  her  great 
cattle  herds  and  ranches  and  invest  all  the  money  in 
bonds,  which  she  did,  keeping  only  the  ranch  and 
blooded  cattle  on  Battle  Creek.  He  now  persuaded 
her  to  go  to  New  York  City  with  him,  and  soon  as  they 
armed  he  joined  his  old  gang  of  profligates  and  spent 
his  nights  with  gay  men  and  women,  only  coming  to  see 
her  when  his  money  was  exhausted,  and  then  only 
long  enough  to  get  more  money.  In  vain  she  plead 
with  him.  Finally,  in  sorrow  and  grief,  not  having 
seen  him  for  several  days,  she  took  the  train  for  the 
West  and  returned  alone  to  her  old  Battle  Creek  home. 

She  had  been  home  about  a  month,  staying  in  her 
room  alone  most  of  the  time,  weeping  and  crying, 
when  one  stormy,  black  night  Clayton  Allen  returned 
about  10  o'clock.  He  immediately  went  to  his  wife's 
rooms.  The  servants  heard  loud  talking  and  angry 
words  between  them  for  some  time,  and  apparently  he 
was  demanding  money  and  she  was  refusing  to  give 
him  any.  There  was  a  large  hall  that  ran  through  the 
center  of  the  house,  dividing  the  building  its  entire 
length.  The  servants  had  their  rooms  and  the  dining- 


140  COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

room  was  on  the  west  side  of  this  hall,  and  the  Cattle 
Queen  had  her  parlors  and  sleeping  apartments  on  the 
other  side.    About  11  o'clock  the  servants  heard  their 
mistress  walking  up  and  down  this  hall,  crying  and 
moaning,  but  on  opening  their  door  that  led  into  the 
hall  found  she  had  gone  back  into  her  rooms,  but  Clay 
ton  Allen  came  in  the  hall  just  then  and  asked  the 
housekeeper  to  bring  a  bottle  of  wine,  as  her  mistress 
was  ill  and  wanted  some.    The  wine  was  brought,  and 
Clayton  Allen  taking  it  out  of  her  hand  at  the  door 
closed  the  door  in  her  face,  telling  her  if  she  was 
wanted  he  would  call  her.     Thirty  minutes  later  the 
housekeeper  heard  her  mistress  scream  for  help  in  the 
hall,  and  rushing  in  found  her  lying  on  the  floor  in  vio 
lent  spasms,  and  picking  her  up  carried  her  to  the  bed, 
only  to  see  her  die  the  next  moment.     The  death- 
stricken  woman  only  spoke  once  as  she  was  being  car 
ried  to  the  bed.    She  whispered  in  the  housekeeper's 
ear,  "Mr.  Allen  has  poisoned  me." 

All  of  the  Cattle  Queen's  money  and  bonds  were 
kept  in  a  portable  safe  and  where  she  kept  the  keys 
hidden  no  one  knew.  But  at  the  funeral  the  lawyer 
from  Chicago,  who,  it  will  be  remembered,  married 
Jerry  Wilson's  daughter,  appeared  an  the  scene,  and 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  141 

after  a  consulation  with  the  housekeeper  and  cowboys 
at  the  ranch,  Clayton  Allen  disappeared,  in  fact  the 
cowboys  kidnapped  him  and  kept  him  guarded  in  an 
old  dugout  for  several  days,  and  when  they  let  him  go 
the  lawyer  had  returned  to  Chicago.  The  safe  disap 
peared  at  the  same  time  the  lawyer  left.  So  Clayton 
Allen  never  got  the  enormous  fortune  that  was  in  the 
safe,  but  he  got  an  administrator  appointed,  and  the 
administrator  sold  the  herd  of  fine  cattle  at  the  Battle 
Creek  ranch  to  me,  as  also  the  use  of  the  ranch  for 
one  year,  and  the  hay. 

I  tried  to  get  some  cowboys  living  in  that  part  of 
the  country  to  take  care  of  the  ranch  and  cattle,  but 
all  of  them  promptly  refused,  saying  they  wouldn't 
stay  there  for  any  amount  of  money.  Then  I  sent  some 
of  my  men  from  my  Wyoming  ranch,  where  I  was  liv 
ing  at  the  time,  but  in  a  week  they  came  back,  looking 
shamefaced  and  sulky,  but  refusing  to  stay  at  the  Bat 
tle  Creek  ranch.  After  I  questioned  them  pretty 
sharply,  they  said  they  didn't  believe  much  in  ghosts, 
but  the  Cattle  Queen's  ghost  was  too  much  for  them. 
They  said  from  10:30  o'clock  in  the  evening  till  after 
midnight  she  tramped  up  and  down  the  hall  in  the 
house,  crying,  screaming  and  groaning.  They  said  the 


142  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

doors   leading  from  the  hall   to   the  Cattle  Queen's 
rooms  kept  opening  and  shutting,  and  they  could  hear 
her  talking  and  expostulating  with  someone  and  walk 
ing  back  and  forth  from  the  hall  to  her  rooms.    I  had 
an  old  man  working  for  me  at  the  time  who  was  al 
most  totally  deaf,   so  I  sent  him  and  my  own  son, 
Georgie,  who  was  a  manly,  brave  little  fellow  of  12 
years,  to  the  ranch.    I  had  a  talk  with  George  before 
they  started  and  told  him  all  about  it.     I  said  some 
one  was  trying  to  buy  the  ranch  cheap  and  was  mak 
ing  these  disturbances  in  order  to  give  the  ranch  the 
name  of  being  haunted.    But  in  a  week  I  got  a  letter 
from  my  boy,  saying  there  might  not  be  any  such 
things  as  ghosts,  but  there  was  certainly  some  kind  of 
carrying  on  in  the  hall  of  that  old  house  every  night, 
and  wanting  me  to  come  up.     So  taking  my  gun  and 
dog,  I  went  up  there  to  lay  the  ghost.    My  dog  was 
one  of  the  largest  specimens  of  the  big  blue  Dane 
breed  and  wasn't  afraid  of  anything.     And  I  said  to 
myself,  "Now  I  will  nail  these  parties  and  convince  my 
sou  while  he  is  young  that  there  isn't  any  such  things 
as  ghosts." 

When  I  arrived  at  the  ranch  I  found  Deaf  Bill,  as 
we  called  him,  and  my  little  boy  had  taken  up  their 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 


quarters  in  the  housekeeper's  room,  which  was  in  the 
extreme  western  portion  of  the  house,  which  was  built 
without  any  upstairs,  all  the  rooms  being  on  the 
ground  floor.  I  went  into  the  hall  of  the  house  and 
found  that  the  doors  at  each  end  of  the  hall  were 
locked  from  the  inside,  the  keys  being  in  the  locks.  I 
next  went  into  the  parlors  and  sleeping  apartment 
used  by  the  Cattle  Queen  in  her  lifetime  and  where  she 
met  her  tragic  death,  and  found  the  curtains  all  down 
and  the  windows  closed  with  catch  locks  and  screens 
outside  of  the  windows.  Everything  was  apparently 
in  the  same  condition  as  when  the  rooms  were  fast 
ened  up  after  her  death.  Her  books,  and  pictures,  and 
paintings,  and  wardrobe,  and  easy  chairs  were  all 
there,  just  as  if  she  might  have  stepped  out  expecting 
to  be  back  at  any  moment. 

I  raised  a  window  in  her  bedroom  with  some  dif 
ficulty,  as  I  wanted  to  air  the  room  a  little,  for  I  had 
made  up  my  mind  to  sleep  in  that  bed  that  night  in 
those  haunted  rooms  and  convince  superstitious  peo 
ple  that  I  at  least  wasn't  afraid  of  ghosts.  I  tried  to 
get  my  little  boy  to  sleep  in  there  with  me,  but  with 
pale  cheeks  and  staring  eyes  and  chattering  teeth  he 

begged  so  hard  that  I  didn't  insist  on  it.    I  have  al- 

10- 


144  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

ways  been  thankful  that  I  didn't  oblige  him  to  stay 
with  me  that  dreadful  night. 

When  I  retired,  about  8:30  that  evening,  with  my 
dog  and  gun  into  the  haunted  rooms  I  was  very  tired 
from  my  long  drive  from  the  railroad,  and  setting  the 
lam])  on  a  stand  at  the  head  of  the  bed  and  putting 
my  six-shooter  under  my  pillow  I  called  my  dog  to 
the  side  of  the  bed  and  laying  down  with  my  clothes 
on,  pulled  some  blankets  over  me,  blew  out  the  light 
and  immediately  went  to  sleep. 

How  long  I  slept  I  know  not,  but  was  awakened 
by  my  dog  who  was  whining  and  licking  my  face. 
When  I  first  woke  up  I  didn't  remember  for  a  moment 
where  T  was,  but  the  next  moment  heard  a  long- 
drawn  sigh  across  the  room  from  me  and  could  hear 
somebody  walking  on  the  carpet.  I  bounded  up  and 
had  just  lit  the  lamp  when  I  heard  someone  open  the 
door  from  the  parlor  into  the  hall,  and  the  next  mo 
inent  heard  an  agonizing  cry  for  help  in  the  hall.  I 
now  grabbed  the  lamp  and  my  six-shooter  and  run 
ning  through  the  two  parlors  opened  the  hall  door 
suddenly,  just  after  hearing  the  second  cry  for  help, 
and  found  that  the  hall  was  absolutely  empty,  the 
doors  at  each  end  still  being  locked,  and  the  door  that 


The  Cattle  Queen's  Ghost. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SWETRAVK.  147 

led  into  the  servants'  part  of  the  house  was  also 
locked  from  rny  side  of  the  hall,  as  I  had  locked  it 
when  I  went  through  to  go  to  bed. 

I  went  back  into  the  two  parlors  and  sleeping 
apartments  and  searched  them  thoroughly,  even  the 
wardrobes  and  clothes  closets;  tried  all  the  windows, 
but  there  was  no  trace  of  any  living  person's  presence. 
I  then  noticed  my  dog.  He  had  crawled  under  the 
bed  and  was  lying  there  whining  in  the  most  abject 
terror.  I  dragged  him  out  and  kicked  him  a  couple 
of  times  and  told  him  to  "watch  them."  But  ap 
parently  he  'd  had  all  the  ghost  business  he  cared 
about,  for  tie  "lay  at  my  feet  trembling  and  whining. 
Disgusted  with  him,  I  laid  down  again,  thinking  I 
would  blow  out  the  light,  but  be  ready  with  my  six- 
shooter  and  some  matches  and  catch  whoever  it  was 
prowling  around  that  house,  trying  to  hoodoo  the 
place. 

I  hadn't  any  more  than  laid  down  and  blown  out 
the  light  before  my  dog  was  trying  to  get  out  of  the 
window  back  of  my  bed  and  whining  piteously,  and 
then  I  heard  a  woman  crying  in  the  same  room  with 
me  and  coming  slowly  towards  my  bed.  I  began  to 
get  nervous,  but  scratched  a  match  an<Fm  the  flicker- 


148  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

ing  light  saw  that  the  room  was  absolutely  empty. 
But  as  the  match  went  out  I  heard  someone  run 
through  the  parlor,  open  and  shut  the  door  into  the 
hall,  and  then  heard  a  long  despairing  cry  for  help  in 
a  woman's  voice.  I  plucked  up  the  little  courage  I  had 
left,  ran  to  the  hall  door,  opened  it,  and,  lighting  a 
match,  gazed  up  and  down  that  empty  hall,  seeing 
nothing  or  nobody.  But  as  the  match  flickered  and 
went  out  there  came  a  breath  of  cold  air  right  in  my 
face,  and  then  out  of  that  black  darkness,  seemingly 
right  at  my  shoulder,  arose  that  awful  blood-curdling 
cry  for  help  again,  and  as  my  blood  froze  in  my  veins 
my  dog  answered  the  cry  with  one  of  those  long,  de 
spairing,  drawn-out,  mournful  howls  that  dogs  al 
ways  give  as  a  premonition  of  death  in  the  family.  I 
tottered  back  to  the  bed  and  vainly  triel  to  light  a 
match,  but  was  too  nervous;  then  hearing  that  light 
footstep  and  that  rustling  presence  coming  from  the 
hall  through  the  parlors  again  towards  the  bed,  I 
dropped  the  match  and  pulling  a  lot  of  blankets  and 
bed  covers  over  my  head,  I  huddled  down  in  a  heap 
and  lay  there  trembling  with  fright  and  horror  till 
the  next  morning,  when  I  heard  my  boy  pounding  or 
the  outside  of  the  window  and  calling  me  to  break 
fast. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  j 

No  money  would  have  induced  me  to  have  stayed 
another  night  on  that  ranch,  and  getting  an  offer  next 
day  for  the  cattle,  I  sold  them.  Five  years  after 
wards  I  saw  a  man  who  had  come  by  the  Cattle 
Queen's  ranch  and  he  said  nobody  lived  there.  The 
house  and  barns  were  all  out  of  repair;  the  fields 
overgrown  with  weeds  and  an  air  of  desolation  to  the 
whole  premises.  The  administrator  had  finally  sold 
the  property  for  a  song  to  an  easterner  and  he  moved 
his  family  up  there  in  the  day  time.  He  had  to  go 
back  to  town  that  night  for  another  load  of  his  goods, 
and  when  he  returned  to  the  ranch  the  next  day,  he 
found  his  wife  roaming  around  the  fields  a  raving 
maniac,  and  she  is  still  in  the  asylum  in  South  Dakota. 
They  say  the  Cattle  Queen's  ghost  still  keeps  entire 
possession,  and  will  till  her  murderer  is  punished  for 
his  crimes. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 


PACKSADDLE  JACK'S  DEATH. 

Facksaddle  Jack  had  got  tired  of  filing  off 
wrinkles  one  night,  and,  not  being  sleepy,  walked  on 
ahead  of  the  special  till  he  came  to  a  sidetrack.  Ly 
ing  down  there  on  the  embankment  he  went  to  sleep 
and  caught  a  violent  cold,  from  which  he  never  re 
covered.  It  settled  into  .a  bad  cough,  and  the  wrinkle 
dust  seemed  to  aggravate  it.  Still  he  insisted  on  tak 
ing  his  regular  shift  in  spite  of  our  remonstrances, 
and  the  harder  he  coughed  the  harder  he  'd  file.  As 
the  motion  of  filing  and  coughing  is  almost  the  same, 
he  seemed  to  make  better  time  coughing  when  he  was 
filing,  -and  vice  versa,  but  finally  he  became  so  weak 
that  he  couldn't  leave  the  way-car  any  more,  and  we 
knew  it  would  be  a  question  of  a  very  Tew  days  till 
old  Packsaddle  would  be  swimming  his  bronk  across 
the  River  Styx.  He  became  very  quiet  and  thought 
ful  those  days — seemed  to  do  a  heap  of  studying — and 

150 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE   SIDETRACK.  151 

one  bright,  sunny  afternoon  he  called  me  over  to  his 
corner  of  the  way-car  and  told  me  he  had  a  dream  the 
night  before  and  it  made  such  an  impression  on  him 
he  wanted  to  tell  it  to  me. 

He  said  in  the  sfart  of  his  dream  he  seemed  to 
be  there  on  the  way-car  planning  how  much  he  could 
possibly  get  out  of  what  cattle  was  left  when  he  got 
to  Omaha,  when  it  seemed  all  of  a  sudden  there  was 
a  mighty  well-dressed  cowpuncher  riding  a  big  paint 
hoss  and  leading  another  all  saddled  and  bridled  came 
right  up  to  him  and  says:  "Packsaddle,  come  with 
me."  He  said  the  stranger  had  on  a  big  Stetson  hat, 
a  mighty  nice  embroidered  blue  shirt,  with  red  silk 
necktie  and  whfte  fur  snaps,  high-heeled  boots,  and 
a  pearl-handled  .45  six-shooter.  He  was  riding  Fra- 
zier's  famous  Pueblo  saddle,  had  a  split-eared  bridle 
and  was  rigged  out  every  way  that  was  proper.  Said 
he  asked  the  stranger  where  he  wanted  him  to  go,  and 
the  stranger  told  him  they  was  going  to  a  country 
where  there  was  no  sheep  or  sheepmen;  where  the 
grass  grew  every  year;  where  the  cattle  was  always 
fat;  where  they  drove  their  cattle  to  market  place  of 
shipping  them;  where  hard  winters,  horn  flies,  heel 
flies  and  mange  was  unknown.  He  said  the  stranger 


152  COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

made  such  a  square  talk  he  finally  made  up  his  mind 
to  go  with  him,  although  he  had  some  doubts,  iiot 
knowing  the  fellar.  So  getting  on  the  led  hoss,  he 
was  kind  of  surprised  to  find  the  stirrups  just  his 
length  and  the  saddle  just  fitted  him. 

He  said  they  started  off  kind  a  slow  at  first,  in 
a  little  jog  trot,  but  directly  got  to  loping,  and  finally, 
after  crossing  a  lot  of  mean-looking  country,  they 
came  to  a  big  river  and  his  guide  told  him  they  had 
got  to  swim  their  horses  across  it  as  there  was  no 
bridge.  The  stranger  said  lots  of  smart  men  had 
tried  to  build  a  bridge  across  this  river,  and  some  peo 
ple  had  deluded  themselves  into  thinking  they  knew 
of  a  bridge  that  they  could  get  across  on,  but  always 
when  it  came  to  crossing  they  couldn't  exactly  locate 
their  bridge  and  had  to  plunge  in  with  the  crowd. 
Packsaddle  said  it  was  a  mighty  ugly-looking  stream. 
It  was  wide  and  deep  and  looked  like  it  was  rising. 
The  water  was  black  as  ink  and  the  waves  out  toward 
the  middle  was  rolling  mountain  high.  Still  there 
appeared  to  be  people  all  along  the  shore,  a-plunging 
in  and  starting  for  the  other  side.  There  was  a  large 
crowd  scattered  along  and  most  of  them  didn't  seem 
to  see  the  river  till  tfiey  fell  off  backwards  into  it. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK.  153 

They  would  be  laughing  and  cutting  up,  with  their 
backs  to  the  river  and  all  of  a  sudden  get  too  close; 
a  little  piece  of  bank  would  crumble  off,  and  with  a 
despairing  cry  they  disappeared  beneath  the  black 
waters  and  was  seen  no  more.  Some  apparently 
mighty  rich  people  dashed  up  with  carriages  and  ser 
vants,  and  taking  a  sack  of  gold  in  each  hand  would 
offer  that  to  the  river,  thinking  probably  they  would 
n't  have  to  cross  if  they  offered  it  some  gold.  But  of 
all  the  people  who  came  to  the  river,  only  a  very  few 
ever  turned  back,  although  most  of  them  seemed  to 
want  to.  He  noticed  a  few  that  looked  like  farmers' 
wives  who  came  up,  and  soon  as  they  saw  the  river  a 
smile  of  content  came  on  their  faces  and  they  slid  in 
to  the  boiling  water  as  naturally  as  though  it  was 
wash-day.  There  was  a  class  of  men,  too,  who  came 
up  with  a  determined  look  on  their  countenances,  and 
without  the  slightest  hesitation  plunged  into  the 
awful  stream  and  struck  out  for  the  other  side.  These 
men  all  had  cowboy  hats  on,  and  when  Facksaddle 
asked  his  guide  who  they  were,  he  said  they  were  cow 
men  who  had  been  shipping  their  cattle  to  the  Omaha 
market,  and  their  cattle  had  starved  to  death  on  the 
stock-yard  transfer  waiting  to  be  unloaded. 


}54  COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

Some  there  was  that  looked  like  pettifogging 
lawyers  and  cheap  politicians,  who,  when  they  arrived 
at  the  river,  flourished  a  handful  of  annual  passes 
over  different  lines,  looking  for  a  pass  over  the  river, 
but  not  getting  it,  turned  back  and  wouldn't  cross, 
and  the  guide  told  Packsaddle  that  he  guessed  this 
class  of  people  never  did  cross,  as  they  seemed  to  get 
thicker  every  year. 

Packsaddle  said  at  first  he  kind  of  hated  to  cross 
the  river,  as  his  guide  said  none  ever  returned,  and 
lie  couldn't  see  the  other  bank  very  plainly,  and  was 
in  some  doubt  as  to  what  kind  of  a  country  was  on 
the  other  side,  although  there  was  hundreds  of  big, 
fat,  red-faced  looking  men,  dressed  in  black,  standing 
along  the  shore  where  he  was,  telling  everybody  what 
kind  of  a  country  was  on  the  other  side.  They  dif 
fered  a  great  deal  in  their  description  of  it,  but  that 
was  probably  on  account  of  what  different  people 
wanted.  All  these  black-robed,  fat-looking  rascals 
got  money  out  of  the  crowds  and  seemed  to  be  doing 
a  thriving  business  by  fixing  up  people  to  cross  and 
giving  them  encouragement.  Most  all  oT  them  was 
selling  some  kind  of  a  patented  life-preserver  to  wear 
across  the  river,  and  each  one  shouted  out  the  merits 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK.  155 

of  his  life-preserver  till  their  noise  drowned  the  roar 
of  the  river,  and  they  tried  to  get  lots  of  people  to 
cross  the  river  that  hadn't  got  anywhere  near  the 
bank,  just  to  sell  them  a  life-preserver. 

Packsaddle  had  noticed  all  these  things  as  they 
waited  on  the  bank  a  moment,  and  then,  he  said, 
they  plunged  their  hosses  in  and  started  swimming 
for  the  other  side.  The  other  bank,  he  said,  was 
sorter  obscured  by  a  mist  or  fog,  and  he  didn't  see 
it  till  most  there,  but  saw  worlds  of  all  kinds  of  peo 
ple  struggling  in  the  black  water  of  the  river.  Pack- 
saddle  said  his  hoss  swam  high  in  the  water,  never 
wetting  the  seat  of  his  saddle,  and  he  felt  just  like  he 
was  getting  home  from  the  general  roundup.  When 
they  struck  the  bank  there  was  a  bunch  of  cowboys 
helped  his  hoss  up  the  bank,  gave  him  a  hearty  hand 
shake  all  around  and  made  him  welcome  every  way. 
When  he  turned  around  to  thank  his  guide  that  gen 
tleman  had  vanished,  and  the  cowboys  told  him  his 
guide  was  a  regular  escort  across  the  river  for  cow 
men  and  cowboys;  that  most  everybody  had  to  get 
across  the  best  way  they  could,  but  cowmen  and  cow 
boys  always  had  a  good  hoss  to  ride  and  a  guide;  that 
one  reason  for  this  was  that  they  was  most  always 


15fi  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

mighty  good  to  a  boss  and  thought  a  heap  of  them. 
They  said,  though,  that  there  was  a  lot  of  boats 
with  cushioned  seats,  and  mighty  comfortable,  that 
brought  over  the  poor  old  widder  women  and  farm 
ers'  wives  and  orphan  children  that  had  been  abused 
and  starved  till  they  just  had  to  cross  the  river  to  get 
away. 

Packsaddle  said  it  looked  like  a  mighty  good 
country,  lots  of  fat  cattle,  the  finest  hosses  he  ever 
see,  lots  of  cowboys  laying  under  the  megs-wagon 
bucking  monte  and  everybody  winning,  while  the 
roundup  cooks  had  pots  and  bakeovens  steaming  with 
roast  veal,  baking  powder  biscuits  and  cherry  roll. 
He  said  the  boss  of  one  of  these  outfits  hired  him  on 
the  spot,  and  giving  him  a  string  of  fat  hosses  to  ride, 
he  picked  out  a  black  pinto  with  watch  eyes  and  sad 
dled  him.  Soon  as  he  got  on  this  hoss  it  started  to 
buck  and  he  said  he  dreamed  that  hoss  throwed  him 
so  high  that  he  saw  he  was  coming  down  on  the  other 
side  of  the  river  and  it  disgusted  him  so  he  woke  up. 

Packsaddle  was  very  weak  when  he  got  through 
telling  his  dream,  and  after  taking  a  drink  of  water 
he  told  me  he  thought  we  was  all  making  a  mistake 
trying  .to  make  money  raising  cattle.  He  'd  heard 


' Jack'; 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  159 

about  some  place  in  the  East  where  they  just  issued 
stock,  place  of  raising  it,  and  that  certainly  must  be 
the  place  to  go.  He  'd  heard  of  two  or  three  men, 
probably  stockmen,  who  get  together  in  New  York 
City,  issued  just  millions  of  stock  in  one  day,  and  he 
was  satisfied  that  was  one  thing  made  our  stock  so 
cheap.  For  himself,  he  said,  he  liked  that  country  he 
saw  in  his  dream  and  thought  he  'd  go  there  pretty 
soon. 

While  we  were  talking  the  head  brakeman  came 
in  and  said  there  was  a  cow  dead  in  the  car  next  the 
engine.  Packsaddle  gave  a  gasp  or  two,  and  wrhen  I 
bent  down  over  him  he  whispered  he  would  go  and 
round  her  up;  and  when  I  looked  at  him  again  he 
was  dead. 

Poor  old  Packsaddle!  His  early  life  had  been 
embittered  by  the  discovery  that  a  married  woman 
(whom  he  was  in  the  habit  of  visiting  in  the  absence 
of  her  husband  down  in  Texas  where  he  was  raised) 
was  untrue  to  him,  and  on  meeting  his  rival  at  the 
lady's  house  when  her  husband  had  gone  to  mill  with 
a  grist  of  corn,  he  promptly  filled  his  rival's  anatomy 
full  of  lead  and  came  away  in  such  a  hurry  that  he 

had  to  borrow  a  jack-mule  and  packsaddle  from  a  man 

11— 


160  COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK^. 

that  was  prospecting,  and  rode  this  packsaddle  to 
Wyoming,  and  thus  acquired  the  euphoniotnTname  of 
Packsaddle  Jack.  Although  he  was  cheerful  at  times, 
vet  the  memory  of  this  woman's  perfidy  to  him  cast 
a  gloom  of  melancholy  over  his  after  life  which  was 
never  entirely  dispelled.  He  never  whined  when  he 
lost  his  money  bucking  monte,  always  had  a  good  sup 
ply  of  tobacco  and  cigarette  papers  of  his  own  and 
never  failed  to  pass  them  around.  While  he  didn't 
have  mucffTove  for  women  or  Injuns,  he  loved  a  good 
hoss  and  twice  owed  his  life  to  his  hoss  when  he  had 
a  brush  with  Cheyenne  Injuns  in  early  days  in  north 
ern  Wyoming. 

In  a  burst  of  confidence  a  few  days  before  his 
death  he  told  me  he  had  endured  the  worst  kind  of 
hardships  all  his  life.  Winter  and  summer  he  had 
lived  on  the  plains  and  in  the  mountains  without  shel 
ter,  by  open  campfires,  lots  of  times  without  much  to 
eat;  had  been  Hunted  and  shot  at  for  days  and  nights 
by  Cheyenne  Injuns  and  never  met  with  the  privations 
and  discomforts  he  had  on  this  trip.  And  as  for  slow 
ness,  he  said  he  hired  out  one  time  in  Texas  when  he 
was  a  boy,  to  help  drive  000  tame  ducks  across  the 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  IQl 

swamps  of  Louisiana  to  New  Orleans  to  market;  said 
the  trail  was  so  narrow  that  only  one  duck  at  a  time 
could  walk  in  it  and  sometimes  no  trail.at  all,  just 
high  grass  and  swamp  brush,  and  yet  they  beat  the 
time  of  a  cattle  special  away  yonder. 


162  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    PACKS  ADDLE    FOLLOWS     THE    DEAD 

COW. 


A  stock  train  was  waiting  on  a  sidetrack  one  day 

For  gravel  trains  going  some  other  way; 

And  as  they  waited  the  cattle  grew  old, 

The  stockmen  grew  haggard,  the  weather  turned  cold. 

Their  stomachs  were  empty,  they  were  starving  in  fact, 
While  the  stock  train    was  waiting  on  its  lonely  sidetrack. 
The  reports  said  the  markets  were  lower  each  day, 
While  the  cattle  grew  thinner,  the  stockmen  grew  grey. 

An  old,  grizzled  cattleman  spoke  up  at  last, 
Said  he  to  the  cowboys,  "The  time  it  is  past, 
To  make  mon  out  of  cattle  or  get  any  dough, 
This  going  to  market  by  rail  is  a  little  too  slow. 

The  railroad  companies'  tariffs  get  higher  each  year, 
Their  passes  get  fewer,  till  I  very  much  fear 
That  ahead  of  our  stock  train  we  will  have  to  walk 
And  wait  for  the  cattle  train  to  get  up  our  stock. 

Let  us  up  and  be  doing  and  build  a  big  merger  trust, 
And  sell  stock  to  suckers  and  let  them  go  bust, 
And  for  every  steer  issue  millions  of  shares, 
Let  other  people  worry  how  to  get  railroad  fares. 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  153 

We  will  issue  bonds  and  certificates  and  thus  raise  our 

stock; 

In  place  of  breeding  Shorthorns  we  will  make  a  swift  talk; 
Have  our  shares  all  printed  in  red,  green  and  gold, 
Sell  them  in  the  stock  market  to  the  young  and  the  old. 

And  thus  live  by  our  cuteness  and  work  of  our  brains 
In  place  of  starving  on  special  stock  trains. 
We  will  have  servants  and  waiters,  the  best  in  the  land; 
Governors  and  princes  will  give  us  the  glad  hand." 

Just  then  the  front  brakeman  stuck  in  his  head, 
Saying  in  the  car  next  the  engine  an  old  cow  was  dead. 
The  old  cowman  gave  a  gasp  and  his  spirit  started  to  ride 
To  round  up  that  old  cow  that  in  the  front  car  had  just 
died. 


CHAPTER   XX. 


A  COWBOY  ENOCH  ARDEN. 

Just  after  leaving  North  Platte,  a  train  of  immi 
grants  on  their  way  from  Oregon  to  Arkansas  with 
mule  teams  went  by  us,  and  we  found  they  had  a 
letter  for  us  from  Eatumup  Jake,  who  had  returned 
to  Utah  long  ere  this  to  look  after  his  domestic  mat 
ters.  One  of  the  reasons  why  he  abandoned  us  was 
to  return  and  look  after  the  education  of  the  twin 
boys.  However,  the  main  reason  wras  that  so  many 
reports  had  come  to  us  from  travelers  in  wagons  and 
sheepherders  trailing  sheep  east,  who  had  come 
through  our  neighborhood  in  TTfaH,  who  said  that  all 
our  friends  had  given  us  up  for  dead,  and  Eatumup 
Jake's  wife,  after  putting  on  mourning  for  a  proper 
season,  had  begun  to  receive  the  attentions  of  a  wid 
ower,  who  was  part  Gentile  bishop  and  part  Mormon 
elder. 

As  Jake  was  in  a  hurry  when  he  started  back 
home,  he  bought  him  a  cheap  mustang  in  place  of  ac- 

164 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  ^5 

cepting  the  transportation  which  was  urged  on  him 
by  all  the  principal  officers  of  the  railroad.  He  wrote 
us  that  when  he  arrived  on  his  ranch,  his  wife  was 
out  in  the  hayfield  putting  up  the  third  crop  of  alf 
alfa.  She  was  driving  a  bull  rake,  hauling  it  into  the 
stack,  while  one  of  the  twins  was  driving  the  mower 
and  the  other  twin  was  doing  the  stacking.  The  half- 
breed  Mormon-Gentile  bishop  was  standing  round 
with  a  cotton  umbrella  over  his  head,  giving  orders. 
Jake's  wife  didn't  know  him  at  first,  he  had  changed 
so,  but  the  bishop  tumbled  to  him  at  once  and  started 
to  leave.  However,  Jake  overtook  him  and  persuaded 
the  bishop  to  turn  aside  into  a  little  patch  of  timber 
with  him,  and  Jake  getting  the  loan  of  the  umbrella 
in  the  painful  interview  that  followed,  he  left  most 
of  the  steel  ribs  of  the  umbrella  sticking  in  the  anat 
omy  of  the  bishop,  and  then  let  the  house  dog,  with 
the  help  of  the  twin  boys  armed  wiith  their  pitchforks, 
assist  the  bishop  clear  off  the  ranch.  This  was  so 
much  better  than  the  old  style  of  Enoch  Arden  busi 
ness  that  Dillbery  Ike  made  up  a  little  rhyme  about 
it  after  we  got  Jake's  letter,  and  here  it  is: 


166  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK. 

In  Utah  a  cattleman  got  married  in  the  glow  of  summer  time, 

Married  a  buxom  Mormon  girl,  warm  heart  and  manner  kind. 

And  as  the  autumnal  sun  began  to  tinge  things  red, 

He  rounded  up  his  catlte  herd  and  to  his  bride  he  said: 

"Come  hither,  dear,  and  kiss  me  and  sit  upon  my  lap, 

For  I  am  going  a  lengthy  journey  with  my  cows  and  steers 

that's  fat. 

I  'm  going  on  the  Overland  with  a  special,  long  stock  train." 
His  bride,  she  wept  and  trembled  and  said,  "I  '11  ne'er  see  you 

again. 

0  Jake,  my  darling  husband,  give  up  this  wrong  design, 
If  you  must  go  east  with  cattle,  then  try  some  other  line, 
For  I  have  heard  the  stockmen  talking  and  this  is  what  they 

say, 
That  if  you  drive  your  stock  to  market,  that  then  there  's  no 

delay. 

But  if  you  get  a  special  train,  the  railroad  has  a  knack 
Of  letting  you  do  your  running  when  your  train  is  on  a  side 
track. 
Some  stockmen  they  have  starved  to  death,  and  others  grow  so 

old 
That  none  knew  them  on  their  return,  so  frequent  I  've  been 

told." 

But  Jake  was  young  and  hearty  and  his  mind  was  full  of  zeal 
To  load  his  beef  on  a  special  and  eastward  take  a  spiel. 
So  he  started  with  his  steers  and  cows  in  the  golden  autumn 

time. 

Some  neighbors  also  loaded  theirs;  the  cattle  were  fat  and  fine. 
But  they  run  the  stock  on  the  Overland,  so  slow  and  awful  bum 
That  stockmen  get  old  and  care-worn,  staying  with  a  special 

run. 

Their  wives  get  weary  waiting  for  hubby's  coming  home 
And  flirt  with  the  nearest  preacher  who  drops  in  when  they  're 

alone. 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  iffi 

Jake's  wife  was  no  exception,  and,  as  time  went  by,  she  said, 
"If  Jake  was  alive  I  know  he  'd  come  back;  he  surely  must  be 

dead." 
The  good  woman  put  on  mourning  and  mourned  for  quite  a 

time, 
But  when  thus  she  'd  done  her  duty,  she  suddenly  ceased  to 

pine, 
And  when  a  Gentile-Mormon  preacher  dropped  in  one  night  to 

tea 
She  put  on  her  new  dress  of  gingham  and  was  chipper  as  she 

could  be; 

Had  him  eating  her  pies  and  jellies  that  she  knew  how  to  make, 
Had  him  sit  in  the  easy  rocker,  without  ever  a  thought  of  Jake. 
And  when  the  twins  got  drowsy,  she  packed  them  off  to  beQ, 
Sat  and  played  checkers  with  the  bishop,  just  as  though  poor 

Jake  was  dead. 
When  she  jumped  in  the  preacher's  king-  row,  and  had  eight 

men  to  his  five, 
She  cared  not  (she  was  so  excited)  whether  Jake  was  dead  or 

alive. 
But  at  four  o'clock  next  morning,  she  roused  from  sleep  with 

a  scream; 
She  'd  seen  Jake  pushing  behind  a  stock  train  in  this  early 

morning  dream. 
And   that   evening    when    the   lusty    preacher    came    hanging 

around  again, 
He  got  but  a  scanty  welcome,  for  she  thought  of  the  special 

train. 

For  a  time  she  was  silent  and  thoughtful,  the  dream  an  im 
pression  had  made, 
She   could   still    see   Jake    pushing   the    special,    as   it    slowly 

climbed  the  grade. 
Now  wo  know  how  the  brave-hearted  Jake  with  the  stock  train 

had  to  stay, 


168  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

How  he  camped  by  her  side  night  times  as  on  a  sidetrack  she 

lay. 
We  know  how  he  pushed  so  manfully  whene'er  she  climbed  a 

hill, 
Jn  fact  every  one  pushed,  even  the  sheepmen,  Cottswool  and 

Rambolet  Bill; 
How  hunger  and  famine  o'ertook  them  as  slowly  they  crawled 

along, 
Their  hearts  almost  broke  with  home-longing  when  Jackdo 

sung  a  home  song. 
Eyes  filled  with  tears  that  were  unbidden,  hearts  o'erflowing 

with  pain — 
No  pen  can  paint  their  sorrow  as  they  stayed  with  this  special 

stock  train. 
The  passing  of  poor  old  Chuckwagon,  who  slowly  starved  to 

death, 
On  account  of  the  smell  of  the  sheepmen,  he  couldn  't  get  his 

breath ; 
Their  camping  ahead   of   the   special   after   they   had   buried 

Chuck, 
The  washing  away  of  the  sheepmen,  who  surely  were  out  of 

luck. 
They  lived  in  snow  huts  on  the  mountain  that's  known  as  Sher 

man  Hill, 

Where  the  last  was  seen  of  the  sheepmen,  Cottswool  and  Ram 
bolet  Bill; 
Their  arrival   at  the  Windy  City  that's  known  as  the   dead 

Shyann, 

Some  things  about  Burt  and  Warren  and  mayhap  another  man. 
And  now  with  their  party  diminished  by  old  age,  privation  and 

death, 
They  still  kept  plodding  on  eastward,  what  of  the  party  was 

left 
Till  Jake  talking  with  wandering  sheepmen,  who  had  trailed 

by  his  cabin  home. 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK.  159 

Heard  of  the  scandalous  preacher,  who  came  when  his  wife 

was  alone; 
Heard  of  the  nightly  playing  of  checkers  when  the  twins  were 

safely  in  bed, 
About  his  wife  all  the  neighbors  were  talking,  her  claiming 

.   that  Jake  was  dead. 
Finally  through  very  home-sickness,  he  started  to   take  the 

back  track, 

And  because  he  was  in  such  a  hurry,  he  rode  all  the  way  horse 
back. 

Arriving  in  sight  of  his  meadows,  a-waving  fresh  and  green, 
The  alfalfa  growing  the  highest  that  Jake  had  ever  seen; 
Two  redheaded  boys  the  hay  were  pitching;  their  mother  was 

hauling  it  in. 
There  was  only  one  blot  on  the  landscape  that  made  Jake  feel 

like  sin. 
'Twas   cur    Gentile-Mormon   bishop    in   the   shade    of    his    eld 

umbreller. 
With  his  long-tailed  coat  and  eye  glasses,  he  looked  like  Foxy 

Quiller. 

When  Jake  got  close  to  the  bishop  he  booted  him  out  the  field, 
The  house  dog  and  twins,  with  their  hayforks,  finished  making 

the  elder  spiel. 
Then  Jake  gathered  his  family  around  him,  work  was  laid  by 

for  the  day, 
They  told  all  their  joys  and  their  sorrows,  so  I  've  finished  my 

lay. 

Moral. 

The  old-fashioned  Enoch  Arden  story  was  a  tale  well  told; 

I  can't  approach  or  rival  it,  nor  make  a  claim  so  bold. 

But  the  ending  of  my  cowboy  Enoch  Arden  I  really  like  the 

best, 
For  he  fired  the  interloper  out  the  modern  Arden  nest. 


CHAPTER   XXI. 


GRAND  ISLAND. 

Before  we  arrived  at  Grand  Island  we  learned 
from  Jackdo  that  most  cowmen  unloaded  their  cattle 
there  and  drove  them  back  and  forth  through  the 
stockyards  awhile  in  order  to  accumulate  a  large 
amount  of  mud  on  them.  This  Grand  Island  mud  is 
very  adhesive  and  once  steers  is  thoroughly  im 
mersed  in  it  the  mud  sticks  to  them  for  weeks  and 
helps  very  materially  in  their  weight.  A  shipper  told 
him  that  before  he  stopped  at  Grand  Island  he  used 
to  wonder  what  cattlemen  meant  by  filling  their  cat 
tle  at  Grand  Island,  but  now  he  knew  it  was  filling 
their  hair  full  of  mud.  Sometimies  he  said  the  mud 
was  a  little  too  thick,  kind  of  chunky  and  fell  off,  and 
sometimes  it  had  too  much  water  in  it  and  drained  off, 
more  or  less.  But  when  it  was  mixed  just  right  it 
would  settle  into  their  hair  like  concrete  cement. 
It's  quite  dark  in  color,  fortunately,  and  if  they  rv  e 
had  a  rain  it  is  easy  to  get  pens  where  you  can  im- 

170 


/o«  /Terr  Loading  3Mept9for  South* &?  ./ok'' 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  373 

merse  your  cattle  all  over  and  thus  make  them  the 
color  of  the  Galloways,  which  is  the  most  fashionable 
color  for  cattle  in  the  market. 

He  said  there  was  cases  where  cattlemen  had 
got  a  good  fill  on  Grand  Island  mud  and  sold  their 
cattle  weighed  up  there  to  feeders  who  put  them  on 
full  feed  for  six  months  and  they  weighed  less  in  the 
market  than  to  start  with,  because  the  feeders  had 
curried  the  mud  off  them.  Sometimes  he  said  after 
people  left  Grand  Island  with  their  cattle  and  before 
the  mud  got  well  set,  there  would  come  a  hard  rain 
on  them  and  the  mud  washed  off  in  streaks  and  gave 
the  cattle  kind  of  a  zebra  appearance.  Especially  was 
this  true  where  the  cattle  had  originally  been  white. 
He  said  we  would  be  expected  to  order  some  hay  and 
pay  for  it  and  get  the  mud  for  nothing.  It  was  just 
like  a  boot-jack  saloon,  where  you  bought  a  high- 
priced  peppermint  drop  and  got  a  pint  of  whiskey 
throwed  in. 

'Twas  here  at  Grand  Island  that  we  met  Joe 
Kerr  again.  We  had  met  him  in  Utah  before  we 
shipped,  and  he  had  tried  very  hard  to  get  us  to  ship 
our  cattle  to  the  coming  live  stock  market  of  the 
United  States  at  St.  Joe.  Kerr  travels  in  the  interest 


174  COWP07  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

of  the  St.  Joe  stockyards,  and  while  in  the  fullness 
of  our  youth  and  conceit  when  we  first  loaded  our 
stock  we  wouldn't  have  taken  a  suggestion  from  Ted 
dy  Roosevelt,  yet  we  had  grown  older  and  had  lost 
some  of  our  self-confidence;  in  fact,  I've  often 
thought  since  these  experiences  that  the  old  proverb, 
"He  who  ships  his  range  cattle  to  market  place  of 
selling  them  at  home  leaves  hope  behind,"  would  ap 
ply  to  most  range  shipments. 

Now  it  seems  Joe  Kerr  had  kept  posted  as  to  our 
movements  right  along  through  friends  of  his  who 
were  in  the  sheep  business  and  who  had  trailed 
their  herds  past  our  train  at  different  times  on 
their  trip  East  to  sell  their  sheep  for  feeders,  and 
Kerr  had  made  such  nice  calculations  by  casting 
horoscopes  and  looking  up  the  signs  of  the  zodiac 
that  he  knew  to  a  month  when  we  would  arrive 
in  Grand  Island,  and  was  waiting  there  to  persuade 
us  to  ship  our  stock  to  St.  Joe  in  place  of  Omahn. 
He  was  right  on  the  spot  to  help  us  unload  them; 
knew  all  the  pens  where  the  mud  was  the  deepest, 
even  helped  us  smear  the  mud  into  their  hair  on  the 
few  spots  that  was  missed,  when  we  were  swimming 
them  through  the  mud  batter.  Joe  had  loads  of  sta- 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  175 

tistics  for  sheepmen,  cattlemen,  horsemen  and  hog- 
men  that  would  convince  any  man  that  wasn't  too 
suspicious  that  St.  Joe  was  the  best  market.  He  had 
beautiful  colored  maps  of  the  yards,  showing  the  clear 
limpid  waters  of  the  Missouri  River,  flowing  along  at 
the  foot  of  the  bluffs;  the  waters  swarming  with 
steamboats  and  smaller  craft;  the  city  of  St.  Joe  cov 
ering  the  bluffs  and  river  bottoms  for  miles,  and  just 
down  the  river  at  the  lower  end  of  this  great  city  was 
stockyards  and  packing  plants  laid  out  like  some 
great  city  park  and  hundreds  of  acres,  all  paved  with 
brick,  laid  into  walks  and  floors  for  the  pens  with 
perfect  precision,  and  all  divided  in  different  com 
partments  for  all  kinds  of  live  stock;  everything  ar 
ranged  so  sheep  could  be  unloaded  one  place,  hogs  an 
other  place,  cattle  another,  so  as  to  admit6  of  no  delay 
in  unloading  when  stock  arrived.  He  told  us  that 
their  yards  were  kept  so  clean  that  ladies  could  walk 
all  over  them  an  rainy  weather  without  soiling  their 
costumes.  Said  no  Sheenies  were  skinning  people  in 
their  yards.  He  made  such  a  square  talk  we  finally 
agreed  to  split  the  shipment  and  let  part  of  the  train 
go  to  St.  Joe,  and  sent  Jackdo  along  to  talie  care  of 
the  cattle. 

12— 


CHAPTER   XXII. 


"SARER." 

The  rainy  season  had  now  set  in  in  good  earnest 
all  through  Nebraska,  and  while  the  natives  have 
typhoid  fever  and  malaria  to  a  more  or  less  extent, 
yet  most  of  them  live  through  it,  but  people  from  the 
dry  mountin  regions  that  have  been  used  to  pure  air 
and  water  all  their  lives  fare  worse  from  these  fevers 
ten  times  over  than  the  natives,  and  Dillbery  Ike  fell 
a  victim  right  in  the  start.  One  evening  soon  after 
we  left  Grantf  Island  I  noticed  his  face  was  flushed 
very  red,  aad  he  complained  of  a  dull  headache,  but 
as  he  had  the  headache  a  good  deal  ever  since  the 
railroad  police  had  scalped  him  at  Cheyenne  in  mis 
take  for  a  striker,  I  didn't  think  so  much  of  his  head 
ache.  But  when  I  come  to  look  at  his  tongue  and  feel 
his  pulse  T  found  every  indication  of  high  fever.  In 
a  few  hours  he  was  out  of  his  mind  and  talked  of 
shady  mountain  sides,  babbling  brooks  and  clear 

176 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  377 

mountain  springs  of  water,  and  lie  talked  of  his 
bosses  and  cattle,  his  cow  ranch  and  alfalfa  meadows, 
but  most  of  all  he  talked  of  "Sarer." 

Now  Dillberv  had  only  one  romance  in  his  life 
that  we  knew  of,  arid  that  happened  in  this  way: 
Several  decades  previous  to  our  story  the  few  families 
living  in  the  vicinity  of  Dillbery's.  ranch  in  Utah  had 
got  together  and  built  an  adobe  school-house,  and 
voting  a  special  tax  on  the  piece  of  railroad  track  that 
run  through  their  part  of  the  country  had  raised 
enough  money  to  pay  for  the  school-house  and  hire 
a  school-teacher.  At  first  each  of  the  three  married 
women  in  the  neighborhood  wanted  to  teach  the 
school.  Then  each  of  them  offered  to  take  turns 
about  teaching  it  so  they  could  divide  the  money, 
but  their  husbands,  who  was  the  directors,  wanted  a 
school-marm,  so  as  to  have  a  little  young  female 
blood  diffused  through  the  atmosphere  in  that  part 
of  the  country,  and  after  advertising  for  a, school 
teacher,  the  New  England  brand  preferred,  got  hun 
dreds  of  answers  very  shortly.  So-  putting  their 
heads  together  they  selected  one  that  had  a  kind  of 
crab  apple  perfume  attached  to  the  application,  and 
was  worded  in  such  way  as  to  give  the  reader  a  notion 


178  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

of  pleading  blue  eyes,  with  a  wealth  of  golden  brown 
hair  and  heaving  bosom,  not  too  young  to  teach 
school  nor  too  old  to  be  romantic  and  sympathetic, 
and  closed  a  deal  with  her  to  come  West  and  teach 
their  school.  She  had  signed  her  name  Sarah  Jessica 
Virginia  Smythe,  but  was  always  known  as  Miss 
Sarer.  When  she  was  about  to  arrive  at  the  railroad 
station,  thirty  miles  away,  all  the  married  men 
wanted  to  go  and  meet  her.  All  of  them  had  partic 
ular  business  in  at  the  station  that  day,  but  none  of 
their  wives  would  stand  for  it.  They  said  that  Dill- 
bery  Ike  was  a  bachelor  and  the  proper  one  to  get  her. 
Now  Dillbery  Ike  was  a  long,  gangling,  bashful, 
backward  plainsman,  never  had  a  sweetheart  and  was 
considered  perfectly  harmless  around  women  by  every 
one  who  knew  him.  The  old  married  men  finally 
agreed  to  let  Dillbery  meet  Fhe  school-marm,  but 
not  till  each  had  went  through  a  stormy  scene  with 
his  wife,  in  which  that  good  woman  had  threatened 
to  tear  the  blanket  right  in  two  in  the  middle  with 
such  forcible  language  that  you  could  almost  hear  it 
ripping.  Dillbery  had  got  shaved,  had  his  hair  cut, 
put  on  his  best  black  suit  he  had  bought  from  a 
Sheeny,  the  pants  being  a  trifle  of  six  or  eight  inche' 


The  Arrival ' 


"?  V      .  V  ?$?3*,J 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  1Q1 

too  short  for  Mm  at  the  top  and  bottom  both,  his 
coat  rather  large  in  the  waist,  but  short  at  the  wrists 
like  the  pants;  and  hitching  his  mules  to  his  spring 
wagon,  he  started  bright  and  early  to  the  station  of 
Kelton,  Utah.  He  arrived  about  noon,  him  and  his 
mules  white  with  alkali  dust,  and  finding  that  the 
train  was  twenty-three  hours  late,  stayed  at  the  sec 
tion  house  till  next  day,  there  being  no  hotel  in  Kel 
ton.  When  the  train  came  along  next  day  about  noon, 
a  large,  portly  lady  of  uncertain  age,  with  her  frizzed- 
up  hair  turning  grey,  her  hands  full  of  wraps,  lunch 
baskets,  sofa  pillows,  telescope  grips,  umbrellers, 
band-boxes  and  bird  cages,  climbed  off  the  train,  and 
the  baggageman  put  off  a  large  horse-hide  trunk,  from 
which  most  of  the  hair  had  been  worn  off,  or  perhaps 
scalped  off  in  the  troublous  times  when  Washington 
was  crossing  the  Delaware.  When  she  got  this  .old, 
bald-headed  looking  trunk  and  a  couple  of  shoe  boxes 
with  rope  handles  (that  were  probably  full  of  Century 
Magazines)  piled  up  with  her  other  baggage,  the 
newsboy  said  it  looked  like  an  Irish  eviction. 

When  Dillbery  saw  this  old  mian-hunter  and  all 
her  luggage,  his  heart  failed  him,  and  he  went  to  the 
saloon  three  times  to  liquor  up  before  he  got  sand 


182  COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

enough  to  talk  to  her.  Of  course,  Dillbery  expected 
to  miarry  her,  no  matter  what  she  was  like,  as  the 
whole  neighborhood  where  he  lived  had  planned  it 
ever  since  the  school-marm  was  talked  of,  and  he 
couldn't  expect  to  disappoint  the  neighbors  and  still 
continue  to  live  there.  Still  she  wasn't  exactly  what 
he  had  figured  in  his  mind  after  reading  a  great  many 
novels  about  the  rosy-cheeked,  small-waisted,  dainty- 
feet,  lily-white  hands,  wondrous  brown  hair,  blue- 
eyed  New  England  darlings,  with  pretty  sailor  hats 
and  tailor-made  suits,  who  come  West  to  teach  our 
schools  and  incidentally  marry  the  most  expert  rop 
ing,  best  broncho-busting,  chief  cowpuncher.  And 
now  here  was  this  dropsical-looking  old  girl,  with 
fat,  pudgy-looking  hands  and  feet  like  a  couple  of 
poisoned  pups,  with  all  this  colonial  luggage. 

However,  Dillbery  was  obliged  to  take  charge  of 
her  and  her  traps,  as  he  called  them,  and  when  he  was 
finally  ready  to  start,  had  got  everything  on  the 
spring  wagon,  even  to  the  bird  cages,  and  after  get 
ting  a  final  drink  with  the  boys  and  filling  a  bottle  to 
take  along,  he  loaded  the  old  girl  in  and  whipping  up 
his  mules,  disappeared  in  a  cloud  of  alkali  dust. 

Dillbery  sat  on  his  end  of  the  seat,  frightened  out 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  '183 

of  his  wits,  and  Sarah  Jessica  Virginia  Smythe  sat  on 
the  other  end,  but,  of  course,  sat  on  all  the  vacant 
seat  left  by  Ddllbery,  'cause  she  couldn't  help  it,  she 
was  built  that  way,  and  was  even  more  afraid  of  Dill- 
bery  than  he  was  of  her.  Although  she  had  always 
been  hunting  a  man,  yet  she  was  in  a  wild  country 
and  a  stranger;  not  a  house  in  sight  and  night  coming 
on,  was  with  a  savage-looking  man,  who  was,  un 
doubtedly,  very  drunk,  and  acting  very  strangely  to 
say  the  least.  As  time  went  on  Dillbery  got  dryer 
and  dryer,  and  studied  a  good  deal  how  to  get  a 
drink  out  of  his  bottle  without  letting  Sarah  see  him. 
Finally  he  concluded  he  could  make  some  excuse  that 
the  load  was  slipping;  he  might  get  around  back  of 
the  wagon  to  fix  it,  and  under  cover  of  the  darkness 
quietly  get  a  drink  out  of  his  bottle.  So  when  they 
were  crossing  a  canyon  in  an  unusually  lonely  spot, 
he  stopped  the  mules  and  muttering  something  about 
the  load,  he  started  to  get  out,  but  Sarah  thought  her 
hour  had  come,  and  throwing  her  arms  (which  were 
like  pillow  bolsters)  around  Dillbery's  neck,  began  to 
scream  and  piteously  beg  him  not  to  do  her  any 
wrong.  The  more  Dillbery  Ike  tried  to  explain,  the 
more  Sarah  Jessica  'cried,  screamed  and  sobbed,  till 


184  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

finally  with  a  despairing  sigh,  like  unto  the  collapse 
of  a  big  balloon,  she  fainted  clear  away  on  his  breast, 
pinning  him  over  the  back  of  the  seat,  his  spinal 
column  slowly  but  surely  being  sawed  in  two  over  the 
sharp  edge.  The  horror  of  poor  old  Dillbery,  when  he 
realized  that  death  from  a  broken  back  was  only  a 
question  of  her  not  coming  out  of  the  dead  faint, 
which  she  seemed  to  have  gotten  an  allopathic  dose 
of,  cannot  be  described. 

When  some  time  had  elapsed  and  she  showed  no 
signs  of  animation,  he  made  a  great  struggle  to  get 
from  under  her;  but  it  was  a  vain  attempt,  he  was 
nailed  down  as  completely  as  a  piece  of  canvas  under 
a  paving  block.  And  when  it  came  over  him  that  he 
was  doomed  to  this  ignominious  death,  when  he  fully 
realized  what  people  would  think  about  him  when 
they  found  him  in  this  compromising  position,  and  the 
cowboys  would  facetiously  all  agree  that  he  looked 
like  a  Texas  dogie  steer  hanging  dead  on  a  wire  fence 
after  a  Wyoming  blizzard;  when  he  felt  that  peculiar, 
loud  buzzing  in  his  ears  that  is  a  premonition  of  death, 
he  made  one  final  desperate  struggle,  and  spitting  out 
a  lot  of  grey  hair,  hair  pins  and  pieces  of  switch, 
which  had  accumulated  in  his  mouth,  he  screamed 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  135 

with  all  the  strength  of  his  lungs  in  one  long  despair 
ing  cry,  the  one  word  "Sareiv7 

Now  in  Dillbery  Ike's  delirium  and  raging  fever 
on  the  stock  train,  he  kept  continually  giving  tongue 
in  a  long,  blood-curdling,  soul-freezing,  despairing  cry 
to  that  one  word  "Sarer."  Night  and  day  we  had  to 
listen  to  that  heart-broken  cry.  Finally,  when  the 
fever  was  at  its  highest  stage  I  consulted  the  con 
ductor  of  our  special  about  getting  a  doctor  and  he 
advised  me  to  go  back  to  the  last  town  we  had  passed 
through,  where  there  was  a  good  physician  and  get 
him.  He  said  that  we  would  have  plenty  of  time,  as 
there  was  a  lonely  sidetrack  just  ahead  of  the  train. 
So  walking  back  about  ten  miles  to  this  town,  1  se 
cured  the  services  of  a  doctor,  and  getting  a  livery  rig 
we  soon  caught  up  with  the  special.  When  the  doc 
tor  had  examined  Dillbery's  tongue  and  pulse  and  had 
put  his  ear  to  Dillbery's  heart  while  he  was  giving 
one  of  his  despairing  cries  for  "Sarer,"  he  wrote  a 
prescription  in  some  kind  of  foreign  language  which 
he  interpreted  to  us,  as  he  said  he  had  written  it  down 
as  a  mere  form  to  show  that  he  could  write  in  a  for 
eign  language.  He  said  our  friend  was  very  sick  and 
the  one  thing  that  would  save  his  life  was  to  get 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE  SIDETRACK. 

"Sarer"  for  him.  Now,  of  course,  that  was  an  impos 
sibility,  but  he  said  all  we  needed  was  an  imitation 
"Sarer,"  something  that  looked  like  her  and  was 
about  her  size  and  form,  so  after  explaining  to  him 
what  "Sarer"  was  like,  he  drove  back  to  town,  and 
when  he  caught  up  to  us  again,  brought  into  the  car 
a  wonderful  dummy  made  out  of  a  large  sack  of  bran 
with  a  head  tied  on  it  composed  mainly  of  a  sack  of 
hair,  such  as  plasterers  use  to  mix  mortar  with.  He 
had  a  large,  but  not  too  large,  Mother  Hubbard  dress 
on  this  wonderful  dummy,  and  the  whole  well  per 
fumed  with  Florida  water.  When  we  laid  this  imita 
tion  "Sarer"  in  the  emaciated  arms  of  poor  old  Dill- 
bery,  his  eyes  grew  moist  for  a  moment,  and  straining 
it  to  his  breast  he  gave  a  contented  sigh  or  two,  whis 
pered  "Sarer,  Sarer,"  and  dropped  off  into  a  healthy 
slumber,  and  the  doctor  said  he  would  live. 

EATS  UP  "SARER." 

Dillbery  slept  for  a  long  time,  and  awoke  some 
what  refreshed,  but  somewhat  under  the  influence  of 
his  animal  scalp,  and  no  one  being  in  the  car,  the 
spirit  of  the  goat  probably  overtook  him,  as  he  de 
voured  the  head  of  the  dummy  "Sarer,"  which  will  be 
remembered  consisted  of  plastering  hair.  Then  the 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  137 

spirit  of  the  sheep  and  the  pig  coming  over  him,  he 
devoured  the  sack  of  bran,  and  laying  down  in  front 
the  stove  like  a  Newfoundland  dog,  he  went  to  sleep. 
Thus  I  found  him  on  my  return  to  the  car.  But,  alas! 
his  stomach  was  too  weak  to  digest  all  the  stuff  he 
had  consumed  and  in  a  few  hours  he  was  in  a  raging 
fever  and  calling  for  "Sarer"  again.  But,  of  course, 
he  had  devoured  "Sarer,"  and  we  had  nothing  to  fix 
up  in  the  place  of  the  dummy.  And  while  it  was 
heart-rending  to  hear  his  sobbing  cry  for  "Sarer" 
growing  weaker  and  weaker  as  the  night  wore  on,  yet 
we  could  only  listen  and  hope.  About  4  o'clock  in  the 
morning  his  cries  stopped  and  he  seemed  to  be  sleep 
ing  for  a  few  minutes,  and  then  opened  his  eyes  and 
took  my  hand  and  in  a  weak  but  rational  voice  told 
me  the  story  of  his  boyhood  in  the  following  words: 
He  said  he  was  born  in  the  mountains  in  Virginia. 
He  was  the  only  child,  so  far  as  he  knew,  of  a  moon 
shiner's  daughter.  His  mother  was  not  an  unhappy 
woman,  he  said,  when  she  had  plenty  of  snuff  and 
moonshine  whisky;  in  fact,  was  quite  gay  at  times. 
No  one,  not  even  his  mother,  knew  exactly  who  his 
father  was.  Some  people  said  it  was  a  revenue  officer 
and  some  said  it  was  the  member  of  Congress  from 


188  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

that  district,  but  most  people  thought  it  was  a  live 
stock  agent  of  one  of  the*  western  railroads.     How 
ever  this  may  bo,  he  thrived  on  corn  pone,  dewber 
ries,  wild  honey,  and  sow  bosom,  and  as  soon  as  he 
got  old  enough  helped  his  mother  cut  wood  and  haul 
it  to  town  in  a  two-wheeled  hickory  cart  drawn  by  a 
steer.    They  lived  with  his  grandfather,  who  was  quite 
a  prominent  man  in  that  part  of  Virginia  and  who 
was  finally  killed  by  revenue  officers.    His  mother  was 
sent  to  the  pen  for  selling  moonshine  whiskey  and  he 
was  taken  charge  of  by  a  family  who  immigrated  to 
Utah.      He   said   the   last   time   he    saw   his    darling 
mother  'twas  at  their  old  home  in  the  mountains  in 
Virginia.    The  steer  was  hitched  to  the  cart  one  beau 
tiful  spring  morning.     The  sun's  rays  was  just  kiss 
ing  the  mountain  tops,  when  two  revenue  officers  had 
appeared  at  their  home,  and  after  a  lively  scrap  with 
his  mother  they  had  succeeded  in  arresting  her.    Not 
though  till  she  had  thoroughly  furrowed  their  cheeks 
with  her  finger  nails  and  plenteously  helped  herself 
to  sundry  handfuls  of  their  hair,  after  which  she  had 
peacefully  seated  herself  in  the  cart  and  was  placidly 
chewing  a  snuff  stick  in  each  corner  of  her  mouth, 
when  the  steer  and  cart  disappeared  around  a  bend  in 


Dillbery  Ike's  Darling  Mother  Under  Arrest 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETtfZGK.  1Q1 

the  mountain  road,  and  fate  had  decreed  he  should 
never  see  her  again. 

The  family  that  took  charge  of  him  were  neigh 
bor  moonshiners  and  had  a  day  or  so  after  this  took 
place  traded  off  their  Virginia  estate  for  a  team  of 
antique  mules  and  a  linch-pin  wagon,  and  storing  a 
goodly  supply  of  moonshine  whiskey,  apple  jack,  corn 
meal  and  bacon  in  the  wagon,  loaded  the  family,  con 
sisting  of  nine  children,  himself  included,  in  the 
wagon,  and  immigrated  for  Utah.  He  said  as  long 
as  he  was  with  these  people  he  was  treated  like  one 
of  the  family,  but  as  they  immigrated  back  to  Vir 
ginia  the  next  year  they  left  him  in  Utah  with  a  poor 
family  and  he  was  hungry  many  times,  and  was  al 
ways  telling  the  children  he  associated  with  how  big 
the  dewberries  grew  where  he  came  from,  so  the  other 
children  nicknamed  him  Dewberry,  which  was  finally 
changed  to  Dillbery  and  that  name  had  stuck  to  him 
ever  since. 

After  finishing  the  story  of  his  boyhood,  Dillbery 
lay  quiet  for  a  short  time  and  then  motioning  me  to 
bend  down  close  to  him  he  whispered  to  me  not  to 
bury  him  in  Nebraska  where,  he  said,  the  only  way  a 
man  could  hope  to  be  resurrected  was  in  the  shape  of 


192  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

a  yellow  ear  of  corn,  to  be  fed  to  a  yellow  steer,  fol 
lowed  by  a  yellow  hog  and  the  hog  meat  eaten  by  a 
yellow-whiskered  malarial  Populist,  and  so  on.  After 
I  promised  to  see  that  he  was  buried  on  his  ranch  in 
Utah,  he  asked  me  to  sing  that  old  'cowboy  song,  "Oh! 
give  me  a  home  where  the  buffalo  roams,  a  place 
where  the  rattlesnake  plays." 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  193 


THE  PASSING  OF  DILLBERY  IKE. 


'Twas  a  dismal  night  on  a  way-car,  the  rain  pattering  on  the 

roof  o'erhead, 

The  man  who  has  told  this  story  was  alone  with  the  silent  dead. 
The  voice  that  had  been  calling  for  Sarah  was  hushed  and 

stilled  at  last, 
He  had  finished  telling  the  story  of  his  childhood's  checkered 

past. 

No  more  would  he  ride  the  ranges,  no  more  the  mavericks 
brand, 

Nor  subdue  the  bucking  broncho,  in  that  far  western  land; 

Never  again  to  meet  the  school-marms,  when  they  came  trav 
eling  West 

Under  the  guise  of  school  teaching,  to  get  in  a  bachelor's  nest. 

Dillberry  folded  his  hands  gently,  as  he  quietly  went  to  sleep, 
In  the  death  that  knows  no  waking,  for  which  no  shipper 

could  weep; 
While  some  of  his  life  had  been  stormy,  of  hardships  he  'd  had 

his  share, 
Pen  cannot  paint  a  cattleman's  troubles,  nor  picture  his  heart 

sick  care. 

When  he  's  got  his  cattle  on  a  special,  and  getting  a  special  run, 
Death  for  him  hasn't  a  single  terror,  he  longs  for  it  to  come; 
And  so  with  poor  old  Dillbery,  when  his  weary  eyes  closed  in 

death, 
Blotted  out  his  sorrows  and  troubles,  all  blown  away  with  his 

last  breath. 


!Q4  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE   SIDETRACK. 

He  had  gone  to  meet  his  grandfather,  and  get  some  of  his 

latest  brew, 
For  who  shall  say  that  old  moonshiner  had  quit  distilling  some 

mountain  dew; 
For  all  say  the  other  world  is  better,  we  '11  get  what  we  like 

over  there, 
While  of  our  joys  here  we  are  stinted,  in  the  hereafter  we 

get  double  share. 

His  eyes  grew  bright  with  a  vision  that  he  saw  on  the  other 

side, 
He  got  a  glimpse  of  a  right  good  cow  country,  just  before  he 

started  to  ride; 
And  his  eyes  lit  up  with  a  gladness,  his  face  o'erspread  with 

hope, 
As  without  a  trace  of  sadness,  his  spirit  rode  away  in  a  lope. 


CHAPTER   XXIII. 


ARRIVAL  AT  THE  TRANSFER  TRACK  OP  SOUTH 
OMAHA. 

One  dark,  dismal,  rainy  morning,  a  little  before 
daylight,  I  arrived  with  the  remnant  of  our  stock 
train  on  the  stockyards  transfer  at  South  Omaha. 
The  conductor  and  brakernan  ordered  me  out  of  the 
way-car.  So  picking  up  my  belongings  I  got  out  in 
the  mud  and  rain  and  looked  around  for  some  shelter. 
There  was  a  lot  of  railroad  tracks  and  switches,  but 
no  houses  or  hotels,  or  anyone  to  inquire  from,  as  I 
had  learnt  by  experience  that  conductors,  brakemen 
and  switchmen  never  give  any  information  to  stock 
men  in  a  dark,  rainy  night. 

So  after  wandering  up  and  down  the  tracks  for  a 
ways,  and  not  being  able  to  find  out  which  way  the 
town  lay  I  got  on  top  of  the  sto'ck  cars,  and  huddling 
down  in  my  rain-soaked  rags  I  prepared  to  wait  till 
daylight.  The  rain  was  very  cold,  and  after  a  bit 
turned  to  snow  and  chilled  me  to  the  bone.  But  I 

195 


196  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

was  afraid  to  leave  the  stock  cars,  as  I  had  never  been 
there  before  and  was  sure  to  get  lost  if  I  left  the 
stock,  as  the  town  is  quite  a  ways  from  the  transfer.  I 
thought  of  Dillbery  Ike,  Packsaddle  Jack  and  old 
Chuckwagon  in  the  other  world,  and  wondered  why  I 
should  be  left  shivering  in  this  awful  storm,  suffer 
ing  the  pangs  of  hunger  and  cold,  while  doubtless  they 
had  more  fire  than  they  really  needed.  No  matter 
what  their  condition  was  in  the  other  world,  it  was 
bound  to  be  better  than  mine.  Even  the  sheepmen's 
condition  in  the  other  world  couldn't  be  much  worse, 
though  some  claim  there  is  a  hell  set  apart  a-purpose 
for  sheepmen  on  the  other  side. 

My  clothes  were  all  worn  out  long  ago;  my  beard 
had  grown  down  to  my  knees  and  the  hair  on  my  head 
having  never  been  cut  since  we  started,  now  reached 
to  my  waist,  and,  of  course,  it  and  my  beard  was  some 
protection  from  the  storm.  But  I  realized  that  if  I 
stayed  where  I  was  it  would  only  be  a  short  time  till 
I  should  meet  my  comrades  who  had  gone  before,  and 
I  thought  it  would  be  proper  to  make  some  prepara 
tions  for  the  other  world.  I  never  had  prayed  or  went 
to  church  much,  'cause  a  cowman  don't  have  any 
chance  to  attend  to  these,  as  there  is  always  either 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  197 

some  calves  to  brand  Sundays,  or  else  some  of  the 
neighbors  coming  visiting.  But  I  remembered  a  pas 
sage  of  scripture  I  had  heard  when  a  boy,  and  it  came 
back  to  me  now  and  kept  ranging  in  my  ears:  "For1 
give  thine  enemy."  I  never  had  an  enemy  in  my 
whole  life  that  I  knew  of,  without  it  was  this  blamed 
railroad,  and  while  I  wasn't  sure  they  was  enemies, 
yet  they  had  dealt  me  more  misery  than  anyone,  ex 
cept  it  might  be  this  stockyards  company  that  was 
keeping  me  and  my  stock  out  on  this  transfer,  starv 
ing  and  freezing  in  the  storm  after  me  and  my  steers 
had  all  got  to  be  Rip  Van  Winkles  getting  that  far  on 
the  road.  I  studied  over  the  matter  and  could  see  it 
would  be  too  great  a  job  to  forgive  them  both  at  the 
same  time,  and,  of  course,  couldn't  tell  how  much  for 
giveness  the  stockyards  company  would  have  to  have, 
as  I  hadn't  got  through  with  them  yet.  There  might 
be  so  much  against  them  before  they  got  my  cattle  un 
loaded  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  forgive  it. 

It  was  very  lucky,  as  it  turned  out  afterwards, 
that  I  had  this  forethought,  because,  as  I  take  it,  for 
giveness  only  comes  from  the  heart  no  matter  what 
your  lips  say,  and  your  heart  is  the  blamedest  thing 
to  control  in  forgiveness,  as  well  as  love,  and  when 


198  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

that  stockyards  company  finally  got  around  to  bring 
my  cattle  in  and  unload  them,  I  reckon  it  would  have 
been  impossible  for  any  mortal  man  with  the  least 
spark  of  vitality  left  in  his  veins  to  have  forgiven 
them.  They  have  tried  over  and  over  to  explain  it  to 
me  by  saying  that  when  they  built  the  transfer  tracks 
and  unloading  chutes,  their  receipts  only  run  about 
1,500  to  2,000  cattle  a  day,  with  about  the  same  num 
ber  of  hogs  and  about  200  sheep.  And,  now  in  the  fall 
of  the  year,  their  receipts  of  cattle  run  up  to  7,000  to 
12,000  a  day,  with  the  same  number  of  hogs  and  20,000 
to  25,000  of  sheep,  and  they  are  trying  to  handle  them 
with  the  same  facilities  they  had  to  start  with.  So 
they  are  pretty  near  'always  so  far  behind  in  unload 
ing  stock  in  the  busy  season  that  it  takes  all  the  slack 
business  season  to  finish  unloading  the  stock  that  ac 
cumulated  during  the  rush. 

Having  made  up  my  mind  to  put  off  forgiving  the 
stockyards  company  till  some  future  date,  I  turned 
all  my  attention  to  forgiving  the  railroad  company.  I 
had  noticed  a  good  many  religious  people  when  some 
one  had  done  them  an  injury  and  they  couldn't  get  at 
them  any  other  way  they  would  pray  for  them.  And 
while  they  generally  asked  the  Lord  to  forgive  them, 


-u  ^B 

,*?• 


A  K? 


<  *tf  * 


The  Arrival  of  the  Surviio/  'aV  the  'Transfer. 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  201 

yet  they  always  told  their  side  of  the  story  in  such  a 
way  that  if  the  Lord  was  anyways  easily  prejudiced, 
he  would  be  pretty  tolerable  slow  about  handing  out 
any  unsought-for  clemency  to  their  enemies,  as  they 
always  started  in  by  telling  of  all  the  mean  things 
their  enemies  had  ever  done  in  order  to  remind  the 
Lord  what  a  big  contract  it  was.  After  studying  the 
matter  over  I  thought  this  would  be  the  proper  way 
to  pray  for  the  railroad  company.  But  after  I  got 
started  telling  the  Lord  what  mean  things  they  had 
done,  I  see  'twas  no  use  to  try  to  finish  unless  I  'd 
hand  the  matter  down  to  future  generations,  as  one 
life  wouldn't  be  long  enough  to  get  fairly  started  in. 

THE  INFERNO  OF  THE  TRANSFER. 

All  night  long  I  had  heard  voices  on  all  sides  of 
me  and  apparently  the  owners  of  them  were  in  the 
direst  distress.  Some  were  praying  undoubtedly, 
but  the  most  were  cursing.  A  few  were  crying 
and  moaning  with  the  cold  'and  I  thought  for  a  long 
time  I  must  have  got  into  an  inferno  of  lost  souls, 
and  added  to  my  sufferings  jn  the  storm  in  which  I 
had  come  close  to  death  was  the  terror  of  listening 
to  these  distressing  cries,  and  I  longed  for  day- 


OQ9  COWBOY  LIFE   ON   THE   SIDETRACK. 

light  to  appear  so  these  horrors  would  be  explained. 
Daylight  began  to  appear  while  I  was  thinking 
about  these  things,  and  I  could  see  other  stock  trains 
near  me,  and  on  every  train  I  could  see  one  or  more 
miserable  wretches  like  myself  huddled  down  on  top 
of  a  car  in  the  snow  and  cold  rain,  and  the  only  sign  of 
life  you  could  detect  was  when  they  took  spells  of 
shivering.  One  of  them  was  pretty  close,  and  I  hailed 
him  once  or  twice,  and  finally  he  roused  up  enough  to 
answer  me;  but  the  poor,  shivering  wretch  was  so 
numb  with  the  cold  he  didn't  sense  much  of  anything, 
and  when  I  asked  him  why  all  the  shippers  stayed  out 
all  night  with  their  cattle,  place  of  going  into  town,  he 
said  lots  of  times  cattle  were  so  tired  when  they  got 
to  Omaha  and  they  were  so  long  about  getting  them 
to  the  chutes,  that  there  was  more  danger  of  their  get 
ting  down  after  they  got  to  the  transfer  and  getting 
tramped  to  death  than  before.  Then  he  said  lots  of 
stockmen  who  tried  to  get  to  town  from  the  transfer 
in  the  night  and  had  got  killed,  and  some  got  their  legs 
cut  off  by  trains  that  were  all  the  time  switching  on 
the  transfer  tracks.  He  said  if  the  Humane  Society 
took  half  the  pains  to  protect  the  shippers  that  they 
did  the  stock  being  shipped  he  thought  it  would  be 


COWBOY  LIFE   ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  203 

better.  He  said  a  shipper  was  a  human  being  even  if 
he  did  look  like  a  orangoutang  just  dragged  out  of  a 
Chicago  sewer  when  he  got  through  to  Omaha  with  a 
shipment  of  livestock.  I  thought  maybe  he  was  get 
ting-  personal,  so  told  him  he  didn't  look  so  fine  him 
self;  that  I  thought  anyone  who  resembled  a  jackass 
in  a  Wyoming  blizzard  hadn't  any  call  to  make  reflect- 
tions  on.  other  people's  looks.  Just  then  the  switch 
engine  coupled  onto  his  train  and  hauled  him  and  his 
stock  off  to  the  unloading  chutes,  and  I  was  kinda  glad 
he  was  gone,  as  I  had  conceived  a  dislike  to  him  any 
way.  I  can't  bear  anyone  who  makes  disagreeable  re 
flections  and  comparisons  on  one's  personal  appear 
ance  when  one  isn't  looking  their  best,  especially  a 
person  who  ain't  got  anything  to  brag  of  themselves. 

THE  FARMER'S  PRAYER. 

I  looked  on  the  other  side  of  me  and  saw  another 
stock  train  with  a  group  of  four  or  five  stockmen  on 
top  the  cars.  They  were  huddled  down  together  in  the 
snow  and  wet,  and  I  thought  at  first  one  of  them  was 
making  a  speech,  but  soon  discovered  he  was  praying. 
It  turned  out  one  of  their  number  was  dying  from  ill 
health  and  the  exposure  of  the  night  before,  they  hav- 


204  GOWB07  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

ing  been  there  all  night  waiting  for  the  switch  engine 
to  haul  them  to  the  chutes.  They  were  a  bunch  of  Ne 
braska  farmers  who  had  bought  some  feeders  in  Oma 
ha  sometime  previous,  shipped  them  out  to  their  farms 
a  couple  hundred  miles  west,  fed  up  their  corn  crop 
and  was  bringing  the  cattle  back.  The  man  that  wa 
praying  seemed  to  be  a  son  and  partner  of  the  dying 
man,  and  was  telling  the  Lord  the  whole  transaction 
from  a  to  izard.  Whether  he  was  doing  this  to  relieve 
his  own  feelings,  or  whether  he  thought  the  Lord 
would  size  his  father  up  as  an  honest  man  in  place  of 
a  sucker,  it  ?s  hard  to  tell.  Anyway,  you  could  tell  by 
his  prayer  that  him  and  his  dying  father  had  got  the 
worst  of  the  deal  all  the  way  through.  What  I  heard 
of  his  prayer  run  something  like  this: 

"O  Lord,  Thou  knowest  how  Thy  humble  ser 
vants  have  been  the  victims  of  designing  and  unscru 
pulous  men.  Thou  knowest,  Lord,  how  a  hooked-nosed 
Sheeny  first  induced  Thy  poor  servants  to  buy  of  him 
a  lot  of  crooked-backed,  narrow-happed,  long-tailed, 
high-on-the-rump,  ewe-necked,  dehorned,  Southern 
steers,  and  how  they  had  kept  them  off  of  water  for 
seven  days,  waiting  for  a  sale,  and  then  let  them  drink 
till  their  stomachs  was  like  unto  bass  drums,  when 


COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK.  205 

they  weighed  them  up  to  Thy  deceived  servants,  and 
then,  O  Lord,  Thy  wretched  servants,  not  having  any 
money  to  pay  for  them,  we  had  to  go  to  a  grasping  com 
mission  man  and,  O  Lord,  Thou  knowest  how  he  did 
charge  us  usury  cent  for  cent  and  all  kinds  of  percent, 
how  he  figured  up  interest  on  the  cost  of  the  steers, 
then  figured  interest  on  that  interest,  then  figured 
interest  on  the  interest  that  he  had  figured  on  the 
interest,  then  figured  a  commission  for  buying  them, 
then  another  commission  for  selling  them,  then  fig 
ured  the  interest  on  the  commission,  then  figured 
the  interest  on  the  interest  that  he  had  figured  on 
the  commission;  and,  how  when  we  had  got  these 
steers  home,  two  of  them  were  dead,  three  were  crip 
ples,  five  were  lump  jaws,  and  how  their  feet  were 
so  large,  and  they  had  such  wise,  old-fashioned  coun 
tenances,  we  were  behooved  to  look  into  their  mouths 
to  determine  by  their  teeth  how  old  they  were,  and 
Thy  astonished  servants  discovered  that  in  place  of 
two  year-olds,  as  was  represented,  they  were  a  great 
many  times  two  years  old;  and  how  many  times  when 
we  had  a  little  fat  on  their  ribs,  they  saw  someone 
afoot,  and  becoming  frightened,  ran  round  and  round 
the  feed  lots  till  they  were  poorer  than  ever,  and  some 


9QO  COWBOY  LIFE  ON  THE  SIDETRACK. 

there  was  that  escaping  over  the  fence  were  never  seen 
by  Thy  servants  any  more,  they  having  disappeared 
over  the  hills  and  in  adjacent  corn  fields;  and  Thou 
knowest  how  we  were  always  sober,  law-abiding  citi 
zens  till  we  were  inveigled  into  buying  these  imitation 
steers,  and  since  that  time  have  lived  in  a  constant 
round  of  excitement,  terror  and  riot." 

The  switch  engine  now  coupled  on  to  the  dying 
man's  stock  train  and  pulled  it  away  to  the  chutes,  so 
I  didn't  hear  the  last  of  the  prayer.  Probably  his  com 
mission  man  heard  it  after  he  got  through  explaining 
why  the  steers  didn't  bring  any  more  money. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 


THE  FINAL  ROUNDUP. 

Two  railroad   men  of  mighty  brain, 

The  steadfast  friends  of  true  cowmen; 

No  matter  which  the  first  you  name, 

We  all  love  George  Crosby  and  Charlie  Lane. 

And  if  in  this  story,  they  should  see 
Some  mentioned  evil,  for  which  a  remedy 
That 's  in  their  power  and  can  be  used, 
They  '11  fix  it  so  the  shipper  is  less  abused. 

Of  all  things  needed,  and  it 's  a  crying  shame, 
Is  some  kind  of  toilet  room  on  each  stock  train; 
In  regard  to  fires,  let  the  shippers  agree, 
Whether  they  '11  be  froze  or  roasted  into  eternity. 

Have  a  call-boy  escort  with  lantern  bright, 

When  at  division  stations  we  come  in  darkest  night; 

To  save  our  anxiety,  fear  and  doubt, 

Put  us  on  the  right  way-car  that 's  going  out. 

To  the  stockyards  company  a  suggestion  could  be  made, 
If  they  expect  to  keep  and  gain  more  trade; 
When  our  cattle  are  delivered  on  their  transfer  track, 
Try  and  unload  them,  or  else  we  '11  ship  them  back. 

If  one  or  two  of  these  evils  should  be  wiped  away 

By  these  suggestions  in  this  humble  lay, 

Then  will  I  rejoice  and  forget  the  days  of  toil 

When  I  composed  this  work  and  burnt  the  midnight  oil. 

207 
14*- 


Elijah  Bosserman,   President. 
M.  H.  Mark,  Vice-President. 
F.  J.  Duff,  Secretary  and  Treas. 
A.   Bosserman,   Cashier. 


Elijah  Bosserman,  Cattle  Salesman. 
Link  Bosserman,  Cattle  Salesman. 
F.   J.   Duff,   Hog  Salesman. 
M.  H.  Mark,  Sheep  Salesman. 


The 


Denver  Live   Stock 

,  Commission  Co. , , 


Telephone  818.       ^       P.  0.  Box  818. 
Union    Stock    Yards,   Denver,    Colo, 


Market  Reports  Furnished  Promptly  by  Mail  or  Wire  on 

Application.     Money  Loaned  to  Parties  Owning 

Stock.     Correspondence  Solicited. 


Incorporated    $20,000. 


Reference : 
ANY  BASK  IN  DENVKU. 


DENVER,  COLO, 


F.   W.   FLATO,  Jr.,   Prest.  JAMES  C.   DAHLMAN,   Sec'y 

I.  M.  HUMPHREY,  Vice-Prest.  J.  S.  HORN,  Treas. 


•     •     •         JL     AAV?       •     •     • 

Flato    Commission 
Company 

LIVE  STOCK  SALESMEN  HMD  BROKERS, 


South  Omaha,  Nebraska;  Chicago,  Illinois;  South  St. 
Joseph,  Missouri;  North  Fort  Worth,  Texas. 


Capital  $250,000.00 


Prompt  and  Careful  Attention  Given    all    Consignments.     Pleased 

to  Furnish  Information  by  Correspondence  or  Otherwise 

to  any  Person  Interested. 


DIRECTORS: 

F.  W.  Flato  Jr.  R.   R.   Russell.  James  C.  Dahlman. 

I.  M.  Humphrey.  Ed.  H.  Reid.  J.  S.  Horn. 

Li.  L.  Russell. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


LD  21-100m-8,'34 


939854 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


